


Red Fish | Part One: Minnow Run

by FlamingoQueen



Series: A Hazy Shade of Winter [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Above and beyond canon-typical violence too, Baking, Birthday Parties, Blueberries, Bucky Barnes is good with children and so is the Winter Soldier, Cambodia broke the Soldier, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Dehumanization, Dissociation, Gaslighting, Gen, Happy couples, KGB, Medical Torture, POV Multiple, POV varying, Pies, Sassy Bucky Barnes, See endnotes for content warnings, Strangulation, The General - Freeform, The General’s grandson, The General’s sons, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier activation codes, allusion to war crimes committed off-page, and is sort of unintentionally natural at it, chocolate cake, fucked up family dynamics, fucked up relationship dynamics, implications of noncon occurring off the page, misuse of rolling pins, nausea and what often follows, problems with eating things, standard Winter Soldier trauma umbrella, that’s not how you use a hammer either, the Soviets still have Bucky, the Winter Soldier continues to have opinions, the wife with the warm disposition, unhappy couples, well the Winter Soldier is learning to be good with them anyway, well-intentioned objectification of a character that is nevertheless still objectification
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2019-11-15 02:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 84,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18064439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingoQueen/pseuds/FlamingoQueen
Summary: The future will not build itself. Someone has to take hold of the present and shape it, block by block, into what will be needed in the years to come. If some of those building blocks are people, are family, well, that has never stopped the General. He has a future to build, after all.(Or: Part one of the origin story of Vasily Karpov, the General’s grandson, from little minnow, to junior handler, to the Soldier’s keeper. Naturally, everything is horrible.)





	1. Prelude | Vladimir: A sure thing

**Author's Note:**

> The title Red Fish is taken from Dr. Seuss’s book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. An enjoyable and quick read, found [here](https://www.mfwi.edu/MFWI/Recordings/One%20Fish.pdf).
> 
> Also, there’s a pseudo-glossary at the end of each chapter for who we meet and what they are called. Just in case it’s helpful. Because there are so many variations on the names. ^_^
> 
> As always, I know just enough about Soviet Russia to be dangerous (and to potentially irritate people who know more), and I have also taken some liberties for the sake of the plot. So please excuse some of the cultural inaccuracies in this story.
> 
> There are content/trigger warnings at the end of this. I’ve made them vague enough to hopefully avoid outright spoilers for anything beyond what can already be found in summary/tags. Please be safe, people. If you want or need more specific details, [message me](https://flamingo-queen-writes.tumblr.com/). Thanks, and enjoy!

_One fish_  
_Two fish_  
_Red fish_  
_Blue fish_

—Dr. Seuss

* * *

 

**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Saturday morning, 10 September 1960—**

Vladimir Ivanovich takes a moment to rub at his eyes, lamenting whatever cruelty of fate has landed him in this mostly empty conference room having this conversation with his father. He can think of many things he would rather do on a Saturday morning, and many other conversations he would rather be having, if he had to have an official conversation with his father on base.

Or, not with his father, but with the General, which is what his father is to him on base and during discussion of the Winter Soldier project. They try to keep a strict separation between family relationships and working relationships, and it is often a successful practice. Not always. Work does occasionally come home, though not… Not quite the way it’s about to, apparently. He has no idea what his step-mother will have to say about this, but he suspects it will be unflattering, and might involve broken crockery.

There is not a time he’d enjoy having this talk, this _meeting_ , but it strikes him as particularly unfair to be having it mere days before his son’s third birthday.

Most fathers get to spend the days leading up to their children’s birthdays sharing loving thoughts with their wives, making sure all the family has been reminded about the upcoming weekend celebration, maybe nipping out to buy a little something for the birthday child and the beloved wife who brought that child into the world.

He is spending that time desperately fending off his father’s plan to abandon the balance of project/work vs. home/family, throw that child in front of a rabid wolf, and hope for “the best,” for the optimal possible outcome.

Because that is what this is. The Soldier is hardly as tame as his father seems to think he is, and all anyone can do when presenting the Soldier with a small child is hope he doesn’t get confused, doesn’t take the child for a target.

As far as Vladimir is concerned, though, the best way to handle this situation would be keeping the Soldier _away_ from the child and then not needing to hope for anything. It’s the reason he’s refrained from bringing his wife or son on base at any point in time. They are not mixed up in this, and it should stay that way. His father might bring the Soldier with him to the dacha or around town, or wherever else on occasion, and his step-mother might pretend to tolerate it on those occasions, but Vladimir is not following those footsteps.

Unfortunately, according to his father, the proper course of action is considerably more risky, and involves a face-to-face extended introduction between Soldier and child. In order to facilitate this introduction, his father has no plans to cancel the weekend birthday gathering where the whole family will come together to make merry and celebrate Vasily’s turning three. No intention of creating a calm and soothing, low-stress environment for the duration of the exposure. No. Why cancel such a thing when you can just drop the Soldier right in the middle of it?

The Soldier whose typical reason for being at such an event is to pick his targets out from the crowd and put bullets in their skulls. That is exactly the sort of thing that will go swimmingly, without even a chance of disaster.

And Vladimir is just glad he happened to read that memo before leaving base to pack up for the coming week. Before any of the events his father has lined up started to happen. Before the Soldier is even off the ice and prepped. He might not have a large chance of changing his father’s mind. But he’s got _a_ chance, and he’s going to make the best of it. For his wife’s sake. For his son’s sake. Hell, even for the Soldier’s sake.

Because when the Soldier inevitably snaps from the strain and social pressure of being surrounded by friendlies in a civilian setting and goes after the nearest soft body, Vladimir doesn’t even want to know how his father will shut that down this time. His father has demonstrated that he can stop a crazed rampage cold, but did they really want a repetition of June ’57? In the middle his son’s birthday party?

It was one thing for the Soldier to tear through off-duty agents and operatives like they were paper dolls at a child’s tea party, but it would be an entirely different thing if he were to go through family at an actual party. With civilians. Children. And whatever assurances his father gives him, Vladimir knows that the Soldier is volatile. Prone to all sorts of misbehavior when the stimulus he receives isn’t properly curated.

He understands what his father is saying. He does. And it’s logical, from a certain point of view. He’s noticed how drawn the Soldier is to delicate things. How distracted he can become when one of them chances across his path in the field. Hell, he’s submitted most of the reports about that defect.

23 December 1957. Codename Winter Soldier spent an extra and unnecessary three hours on a rooftop because there was a bird on his rifle and he didn’t want to spook it. Something about how “squishy” it was, a word choice that had made Vladimir very uneasy at the time, though it hasn’t cropped up since.

The target was killed, a child spared, and the Soldier made his extraction deadline without a problem. But still. He’d reported it, after the Soldier went back in the freezer and his father had asked about his field performance to get a second perspective. He reports anything that could signal a breakdown of the programming. Safer is better than dead. He has a family to support.

20 April 1959. Codename Winter Soldier stared at a small cloud of butterflies in a patch of flowers in a hotel parking lot for two hours instead of monitoring the balcony of the target’s room at said hotel. Orders were to stake out a target and eliminate if the opportunity presented itself; he had staked out a bunch of butterflies.  

Granted, the target had not come out onto that balcony or even walked past the window of her hotel room at any point during those two hours. And given how quickly and accurately the Soldier had shot her the second she _did_ open the balcony door, it could very well be that he was capable of staring at butterflies and also monitoring a hotel room. But still. He’d reported it. He hadn’t risked scolding the Soldier or redirecting his attention while sharing a rooftop with him, but he wasn’t going to shirk on the after-mission reporting.

18 March 1960. Codename Winter Soldier sat through three different perfect shots—perfect, at least, to Vladimir’s eyes—and very nearly missed his entire chance to eliminate his mark because a school bus was picking up children within sight of the target, a woman with a bassinet was walking through the projected blast radius, and there was a small feral cat in the street chasing his laser sight.

The target was dead, killed cleanly and without a single collateral injury. No trauma for children who would otherwise have witnessed a murder. No glancing damage to the woman or her baby. Hell, even the damn cat had gotten bored and run off, eventually, instead of being frightened away by the gunfire. But still. He’d reported it. And they’d taken the laser sight away. The Soldier didn’t need it, and it was clearly a distraction.

And just last month: 1 August 1960. Codename Winter Soldier rearranged his target’s collection of blown glass circus animals after the hit. All the elephants, arranged according to size and color. All the bears with, apparently, their tutus. The lions. The tigers. The dogs in hats and clown costumes. Everything.

He’d left no fingerprints, and he’d drowned his target in the bath before messing around with the glass figurines, but that was an hour of time he hadn’t needed to be in the head of MI6’s home, an hour of time during which he could have been discovered. The Soldier _wasn’t_ discovered, and he’d gotten the job done, but still. He’d reported it.

He’d reported no fewer than a dozen such incidents, and he was hardly the only handler reporting these things. If there was something in his field of vision that interested him more than the prospect of killing a mark, if it was something small and delicate, chances were high it would be a distraction. He’d get the job done, and perfectly by some standards of measurement, but not without certain… inefficiencies along the way.

Sometimes, if the pre-op wipe was set just right, he wouldn’t notice these things, would overlook the child in the next room, the praying mantis in the grass, the droplets of dew on a spiderweb in the dawn. But that wasn’t the answer. When the Soldier failed to notice any one category of potential distractions, he was less attentive across the board. Better that he notice and then ignore the distractions. Something he did well, but not as perfectly as he killed people.

So yes. The Soldier has a fondness for tiny things, fragile things, innocent things… And no amount of sticking him under the halo and trying to fry that out of him has been working satisfactorily. Vladimir has no arguments with that. Fact is fact. He doesn’t even object to the notion that they are pivoting on the strategy for handling this fact.

After all, if burning it out does nothing, why waste the electricity? Save it for running something else, or charging up more of those stun batons Sasha loves so much, or whatever. If carving it out via excavation team does nothing and risks much, why waste Yarik’s time? Let his team dig around to pry out the things they can successfully remove, like the Soldier’s family, his friends, his homeland.

No, he doesn’t argue in the slightest that it’s a better idea to use the weakness as an asset, though he’d have liked to be present for that decision if he’s going to continue field handling the Soldier in his father’s stead. Where his objection lies is in using _his son_ as a test subject in this new plan.

And this is why he has spent the last hour trying and failing to convince his father to call off the plan, or to postpone it, or to find a different way to test the Soldier that doesn’t put his son in front of an occasionally insane living weapon for a whole week without a heavily armed support team standing in the wings.

“But he gets _confused_ ,” Vladimir says, _again_ , while shaking his head. Again. They have no way of ensuring that the result of a meeting between the Soldier and his son is an afternoon studying butterflies together at the dacha. What if they put the Soldier in a room with Vasily and it’s… What if it’s Cambodia all over again? His father wasn’t there. His father didn’t see what was left over after the Soldier hacked his way through that village.

“Gets past and present swapped around,” he continues. “Loses track of where and when he is.” Sometimes that results in a blank stare, a bit of near-catatonia that is convenient enough to work around until the Soldier returns to the here and now. Other times, that results in an attack on personnel, which is not at all convenient and often necessitates hiring replacement personnel and sending letters of condolence.

Across from him, his father merely waits him out, fingers laced together and resting on the tabletop. Letting him have his say, no doubt, before he pulls rank and shuts the objection down. Well, if he’s getting to have his say, he’ll have it, damnit. He’ll lay it out clean and blunt and stop mincing words.

He lets out a breath, consciously relaxes his shoulders. “General, what if he looks at my son and sees that boy in Cambodia? The one he gutted and then strangled with his own intestines while his mother was—” He shudders, forces himself to relax again. “Or any of the others. What if he sees Vasya and goes back to that village in his scrambled up head? Thinks he has to rip everything apart? Has to rip my son apart. My wife.”

His father doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest by the mention of Cambodia, even though Vladimir knows it haunts him. Haunts them all, really, except Sasha. But Sasha is messed up in the head from the Great Patriotic War, from Kronas. There’s no accounting for Sasha.

“I can’t bring him around like you can, General.” He tries another route. Anything to protect his son. “No one can. When the Soldier freaks out, it’s all we can do to find cover until someone can shoot him with a tranq dart. And there won’t be anyone at the dacha who can do that.” He hits his palm against the tabletop. “I’m not putting my son in his path! Even if he does get distracted by helpless things.”

“The Cambodia mission is what’s giving you pause?” His father casually draws his hands apart and reaches for his water, takes a sip, and Vladimir knows in that moment that he’s already lost this argument, has made a mistake, has given his father ammunition. “The mission that had to be postponed and completely replanned, _twice_ , because our Soldier refused to comply even so far as to get on the helicopter?”

He starts to object, even though he knows it’s hopeless now, but his father holds up a hand, and he knows better than to try interrupting or speaking over him. His father has commanded armies, directs the Soldier like a master puppeteer. He’s not a man to interrupt.

“The mission that required a dozen support team operatives specializing in takedown tactics, armed with stun batons and _kalashnikovs_ , not to help our Soldier complete his mission, but to contain him if it came to that?”

Vladimir grits his teeth. Yes, and half of those operatives had turned out to be monsters he’d needed to put down himself. More hindrance than help, and he’s only glad they were assigned to the op so that he had the opportunity to rid the world of them once they showed their true colors.

His father takes another sip of water, calm despite the subject matter neither of them would willingly revisit if Vladimir hadn’t erred in using Cambodia in his reasoning. He could kick himself. Not only was he going to lose this argument—had already lost it the moment his father picked up what he’d dropped—but with the wretched Cambodia op refreshed in his mind, his sleeping brain will probably superimpose his son on every one of those doomed children, his wife on every one of those women.

“And that required _three_ battle-tested field handlers in addition to yourself, equipped with verbal activation codes specifically set up to keep him pointed in the right direction and moving forward once the team hit the ground?” His father sets the cup down with a click of glass on formica that seems pointed and probably is. “Even after Sasha burned the mission parameters into his head for seven straight hours?”

Okay, yes, that mission had required the longest pre-op halo session and largest team of qualified field support to date because the Soldier wasn’t as tractable as they’d have liked when they set out, had still been struggling to refuse the mission. He’d seen it in the Soldier’s eyes, the way he held himself, the occasional hitch in his breathing or half-shake of his head. Had half feared they’d have to abort the mission before they arrived, but still…

He tries again, but doesn’t get far. “General—”

“The mission that distressed him so badly that he dropped into catatonia on the flight back and had to be physically hauled out of his seat and dragged off the transport vehicle by his tac vest? The one that required a full reset under the halo post-op followed by three months with the excavation team and then three more months in cold storage because it traumatized him to comply with those orders?”

Well of course it had traumatized him—it had traumatized everyone, except fucking Sasha—but he’d still complied in the end, hadn’t he? Still ripped down walls and tore up cellars and dug out every last trembling villager to be slaughtered and chucked into the shallow pit of a mass grave. Willing or not, he’d been dedicated and thorough in his obedience.

“The mission that so devastated him,” his father continues, “that it’s now a viable form of punishment merely to remind him of it?” He pauses, raises his eyebrows in challenge. “ _That_ mission?”

Vladimir closes his eyes to collect himself, but sees the trail of mangled pieces of humans they’d left in their wake all through that Cambodian village, the bits left over that didn’t make it to the grave site, and opens his eyes again to escape it. The Soldier is not the only one still reeling from the effects of that mission years later. He’s never been so sick in his life as he was on the way back from Cambodia, the months after it. Has never had nights so sleepless as those.

Damn Sasha and his twisted mind. They could have strafed that village from the air if it had to be destroyed at all. It would still have been the atrocity needed to fan those flames and help ignite the war, even without the… personal touch. There was no need to make it firsthand like that. No need to put feet on the ground and, in the Soldier’s case, fists through people.

“You weren’t _there_ ,” he rasps out. He wasn’t. He didn’t see it, didn’t smell it, didn’t trip over pieces of fellow human being, organs torn from torsos and bits of skull ripped from heads. Hadn’t had to pull his men off of grieving mothers and terrified daughters while the Soldier made bloody smears out of everyone else. Hadn’t had to shoot his own men just to keep that sort of raping trash from coming back home. To shoot their victims, too, out of what he hoped would count as mercy.

“ _You weren’t there_ ,” he says again, voice raw. Not a single villager left alive, and less than half their own men returning. Vladimir still has nightmares, has nights he doesn’t dare shut his eyes. And all he had done was point the Soldier in the right direction, pull the trigger on his father’s weapon.

He hadn’t planned that mission, hadn’t arranged a damn thing. The plan had been Sasha’s, and the actual physical force shredding living humans into offal and scraps… That had been the Soldier. He wouldn’t have been capable of such a thing, himself, no matter how much pressure there was to comply. He’d hardly been able to stomach directing the Soldier, except that stepping back from that duty would have put Sasha in command.

No, he had served as witness, God help him, had allowed that debacle to unfold before his eyes, had followed through with Sasha’s arrangements so that his brother couldn’t take the reins and make it even worse. He’s no innocent, and he wears the blood of those villagers as plainly as the Soldier does. But he hadn’t been the one to tear those people apart. It hadn’t been his hands wrapped around throats and buried in entrails.

He wasn’t capable of that, but the Soldier _was_ , and so what if he’d seemed to choke on every in-drawn breath while doing it. _He still did it._ He would still do it again, if the right person issued the right command with the right tone of voice. He might even do it again if he forgot where and when he was.

That was the issue, that was the _exact_ issue. Not some unfounded fear that the Soldier would knowingly and willfully attack his son, either for revenge or out of spite. The Soldier—shockingly, impossibly, but unarguably—has never demonstrated a desire for anything resembling vengeance for what any of them do to him. Even Sasha.

But he also loses track of himself, and lashes out, and repeats actions he’s previously been commanded to perform. Actions, maybe, like the ones he was made to carry out in Cambodia.

“You don’t know what he’s capable of _doing_ , Father.”

“I know _exactly_ what he’s capable of doing, Vova.” The words are cold, hard; an unsheathed knife, despite his allowing and even following Vladimir’s slip into the personal. “I _made_ him capable of those things.” His father stands, leaves his hands on the table as he leans forward, looming. “I read your report, and I read Sasha’s report, and I studied every photograph from the field.”

He jabs a finger at the tabletop. “What’s more, I listened to my Soldier recount every moment of that operation, all the parts you never had to see, all the words they spoke as he killed them, words you didn’t understand, but _he did_. Four days, Vova. It took four days for me to get every detail out of him. And the whole time, he begged me to let him forget it.”

Yes, he can well imagine the Soldier did beg. But he knows as well as anyone else that his father had instead had Yarik’s team brand it across his brain as hot and deep as his activation codes so they could ensure perfect recall on command while allowing the Soldier to be largely unaware of it the rest of the time. Reminding the Soldier of that mission was, by all accounts, an extremely effective deterrent against a number of unwanted behaviors. Mostly because it distracted him from those behaviors by drowning him in remorse. 

Vladimir swallows. He, at least, has never opted to use that form of punishment, because he would rather not remember Cambodia himself. There’d been a lot of work done on the Soldier after that op. A lot of _repair_ work. Even after his time with Yarik and the rest, even after the freezer, it had been nearly a year before the Soldier was truly field ready again.

It had been longer before Vladimir had been ready to be in the field _with_ him, holding that leash, knowing what sort of creature was at the other end of it, what the Soldier could and would do on command. And now they were going to put his baby boy in the Soldier’s path and hope no one spooked him. His child. His wife.

God. He hasn’t even properly described the Soldier to Polina, or anything else about this project. She’s hinted, dropped leading questions, outright asked for information. And he’s given her less than the minimum, hoping to keep her safely out of the mess and, to be honest, ensure the appropriate secrecy of the project. She can keep secrets, and does so regularly when asked to, but why give her anything she has to hide from the gossips at her office?

He’s hoped beyond hope it would never matter, that she would never cross his path. He hasn’t got the faintest idea how much to tell her so that she doesn’t set him off. He’s going to have to brief her on this, and he’s never even rehearsed what he should say.

Sweetheart, he imagines himself saying, this is the Soldier. He’s an insanely violent thrall of my father’s, and yes, his whole arm is metal, and we keep him in a freezer sometimes, and we electrocute him on a rigorously tested schedule, but please, _please_ don’t ask me the why or how of any of this, because I worry you’ll divorce me over the cruelty of it. Oh, and by the way, Father’s current plan is to set up our darling little boy as the next holder of the leash. Is that okay with you, Polinochka, my dearest darling, love of my life?

The prospect of the upcoming week looks grimmer and grimmer. He should be busily planning parties, not busily coming up with rationalizations for all of _this_ , all of the Winter Soldier project, all of the violence and cruelty and— She won’t leave him, even if he utterly fails to make this project sound less appalling than it occasionally is. He’s pretty sure of that. But they will definitely argue.

He doesn’t want to argue on the eve of their son’s birthday. When she’s so close to bringing their daughter into the world. He doesn’t want to argue with her at all, ever, but he can’t see her accepting some of the information without argument, or at least painfully pointed questions. But how much to share? She can’t treat him like a person, he knows that much. She has to be warned not to think of him as a person.

“Oh, I _know_ what my Soldier can do,” he father continues, dragging Vladimir back into the present moment. “I made sure he was capable of _all_ of that, and more besides that you don’t know about and never will, if I have anything to say about it. And now I am ensuring that he is as compliant and loyal where your son is concerned as he is with me. Because someday, _I am going to die_.”

Vladimir’s hands clench of their own accord. It isn’t enough that his father has turned his point against him with Cambodia, has dug all that blood and horror up and flung it in his face. He’s swinging the weapon of his mortality as well. The prospect of needing to wrestle with Sasha over control of the project that he doesn’t want but that he can’t let Sasha have for everyone’s sake.

Putting Sasha in control of the project… The whole world would be one massive reenactment of fucking Cambodia, probably. And HYDRA, to boot. He can’t see his brother bothering to keep clear of that fascist mess without their father’s watchful eye keeping him in check. HYDRA is vicious enough—he’d probably seek them out if Father wouldn’t object, and violently. Father has sent the Soldier out after men for less. Vladimir doesn’t think any of them are above that particular unspoken threat. They know too much to be allowed to fall in with that lot.

His father sits down again, breathes out, letting his exhaustion show for a moment, a brief window that’s quickly shut once more. “It may seem like it, but I am not immortal, Vova.” His voice is quiet again, measured, no longer relentlessly driving a point home. “I will die someday. And as you say,” he continues, “there is no one who can bring him around like I can. _Yet_.”

They sit in silence for several minutes, Cambodia and everything else hanging in the air between them.

He’s not had to consider his father’s mortality since the mission in Prague that nearly ended him. If the Soldier hadn’t done… whatever it was he did in that van, then he’s not sure where they’d be. His father remains the only one who can reliably direct the Soldier, and without him, there’s just no telling how unstable the Soldier would be by now.

He’s certainly less and less stable in the field without his beloved General by his shoulder or in his ear. Needs more direction and does better with a handler on the ground with him. Gets distracted. Adds little side missions, sometimes, if he’s entirely solo, or makes something more difficult than it has to be for the challenge of it. If it’s not his preferred handler giving the orders, the Soldier is more erratic. But how much longer will his father be around to conduct those briefings?

This is the first time since Prague, since his father’s near-miraculous recovery from his injuries, that there’s been any discussion of his father retiring further, of his not merely leaving the field, though at seventy, he is more than due for a full retirement. Still, for him to be discussing his own death when he’s more spry than most men ten, even twenty, years his junior is jarring.

But not quite jarring enough to distract Vladimir from the argument he’s pursuing. He has to try again, while he still has his father’s attention. While the tension in the room has returned to a simmer. Has to find some way to protect his family.

“Vasya is two, Father,” he finally says, trying again from the beginning, trying another path, since the last one has failed to be convincing. His father is apparently fine with them abandoning rank and formality, and he isn’t about to let another possible approach go wasted. Why not appeal to family ties? “Going to be three. It’s a little early to be designing his career path.” What if the boy wants to be a painter? Or a linguist? Or… anything other than a handler?

He reaches for his own glass of water, more to have something to hold than for any thirst. He knows his tells, needs to keep himself from gesturing if he can. “And I don’t see how establishing an attachment is going to do anything positive, regardless. Sasha makes him shoot any of the base cats he gets attached to.”

His father looks sour for a moment. “I’ve spoken with him about that. We’ll need to have more words between us, apparently.” He consults his pocket watch and sighs. “I’ve another meeting soon, Vova.” He stands, but does not immediately leave the room.

“Father?” Vladimir frowns up at him, waiting. His father is a punctual man, and won’t show up late to whatever other meeting this is. Whatever this pause is about, it’s not an invitation to continue his argument. He’ll have to find another time for the rest of his protest. There’s still… a few hours, maybe, before he has to leave. He can find an opportunity, even if he has to dog his father’s footsteps until the last moment, set out for the dacha far later than desired.

“You need to trust me, son. I know our Soldier’s innermost workings. He will not hurt Vasily. And in time, our Soldier will happily kill for him.” He looks tired again, just for a moment. Tired, or maybe just frustrated. “If the cards are played right, everything Sasha was able to force him to do in Cambodia, and much more, our Soldier will someday do for Vasily by choice, just because he is _asked_ to.”

“If we play the cards right,” Vladimir says sourly. “A gamble, Father. A gamble with my son’s life.”

His father shakes his head. “Not a gamble, Vova. As sure a thing as there is in this world.” And then he’s pointing a finger for emphasis, and Vladimir feels momentarily like a scolded child. “Provided you don’t fuck it up.”

Vladimir watches his father disappear through the door, leaving him alone in the conference room. He has a feeling he won’t sleep tonight, and not just because he’s got a briefing to design and his nightmares will drown him in the blood-slicked mud of that little village the second he closes his eyes.

No. He’s lost this argument, and now faces the looming prospect of the Soldier in close proximity to his wife, interacting with his son, maybe one day being handed down to Vasily like a cursed heirloom.

A sure thing. He’d laugh if he didn’t feel like crying.

It’s like some wretched fairy tale, only he doesn’t get to keep his son happily innocent until his sixteenth birthday, but only until his third. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>     
> In this chapter:
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Yaroslav Danilovich Nekrasov, the head of the excavation team. Also called Yarik by friends and family.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya. The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.


	2. Prelude | Soldat: From a great height

**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Saturday afternoon, 10 September 1960—**

“… _Homecoming_ …”

He re-enters existence with a scream. The first thing he knows is light.

It is not a gentle light, not a soft glow, not a daintily flickering flame. There is nothing harmless about the light—it seeks out every crevice and obliterates what it finds hiding there, blasts smooth the grooves of thought and self. Returns him to where he belongs, brings him back to himself as he should be, scoured clean and primed for use.

That is something he knows before he sees anything at all, before he knows anything at all, before he  _is_ anything at all.

The light is everywhere, coming  _from_ everywhere, lighting up everything and illuminating nothing. His entire universe is light, and only light. The light comes with pain, naturally.

Everything comes with pain, though, near enough.

Pain is nothing. It’s hardly worth remarking on, hardly worth the notice, hardly worth his focus. Pain is where he belongs, where he is most at home; pain  _is_ home, in a way. Experiencing pain is coming home. Pain is his family, pain is his friend. Pain is homeland, is home city, is home and everything in it.

And the reverse is as true.

He does not have a family, but he has pain. His family  _is_ pain. The mother he does not have is pain. The father he does not have is pain. All of the family he does not have is pain.

Mother-pain. Father-pain. Sister-pain. Brother-pain.

He has no friend, but that friend is pain. His home and everything in it, pain upon pain, pain begetting pain. Pain comes from pain.

…order… comes from… order only comes…

( _NO._ )

“… _One_ …”

It’s nonsense for a fish to dwell on the nature of water while he dwells  _in_ that same water—how does the fish know water from not-water if the fish has never known not-water to begin with, has been immersed in water from the opening chapters of its life, with no knowledge that existence could be anything else?

But he is no fish. He can and does dwell on his pain while he dwells in it. He has never known not-pain, that much is true. But he can still pick apart the nuances of agony. There are many degrees of it, many flavors, many variations just that tiny bit different from the rest. He knows them all.

He dwells on them both, on the light _and_ the pain. All he knows, all he has known, all he is. Together, they are possibly the one unified constant his life revolves around—white-hot pain.

It’s mostly dammed up behind his eyes—the light doesn’t hit his eyes from the outside and sear its way inside like a sun he should not look at, that will blind him, that will leave its blue-black image over everything forever afterward. It is already there, behind his eyes, deep in his brain and radiating out.

His brain is light, is pain, is a drawn-out scream hardly heard from far down inside the hideously bright void he dwells in.

The light is within him, saturating his brain, welling up in his eyes like tears. It gathers in the corners, a thick prickle-sting along the edges of his eyelids, the knowledge of impending emptiness, of tears already poured out. 

And the pain follows the light, spilling out of his eyes and across his face, down his cheek and along the side of his head, pressing in tight and hot and bright. Lingering there, welling up again, gathering momentum like a glacier eager to calve that just needs one more little push.

Then the pain flows freely, river-swift, down along his jaw, his neck, his shoulders. Along his arms to the wrists. Legs to ankles. Points of fire—whirling eddies in the white-hot rapids—at ankles, wrists, upper arms.

 _Points of restraint_ , he knows without conscious acknowledgement. He is restrained, has to be kept in place, has to be held down, held back, contained. He is… There are… It has to be this way… for… reasons…

(But  _why?)_

Someone said so. Someone who is right, someone who knows what is best, someone who wants what is best. For him and for everyone else. The most important someone.

(But _who?_ )

You know who.

Those are mere pinpricks, though, the restraints. Tiny droplets of pressure in the ocean of white fire roaring and raging behind his forehead, barely contained by his skull or else the entire world would flood with it, drown in it, like he drowns.

“… _Freight car_ …”

His head is not enough to keep this in, the bone not thick enough to contain the pressure of it all. He feels as though it will shatter in a moment, bone giving way like a sheet of ice dropped off a roof and rendered by the fall into a thousand glittering crystal shards.

Falling. Like  _he_  was. Falling like a piece of ice, or glass. Spinning shiny through the white, through the void, a delicate thing, made for breaking, made for falling, made to shatter against the impact of rock and frozen river, time and again, always, forever. Made to fall, made _by_ falling. One and the same.

Fallen. Like he  _had_. Fallen from a height—from a _great_ height. Fallen from and through and down and over, and tumbling-twisting-twirling over and over, end over end, this _is_ the end. The end… of the… The end of…

(… _of what?_ )

Snow and rock and sky and steve and track and trees and the solid crack of ice-slicked river collision. The crack of bone, caving-brittle-broken. The creeping-gushing-rushing tide of memories and self spilling out across the icy river crust like blood from a meaty sack, once full and then burst. Emptying, then emptied, then empty. Now hollow.

Like him. Fallen out of fear and into nothing. Fallen and returned to nothing, come home to nothing.

So, so much nothing. Flurries of nothing, whirling in the void like a flock of starlings at sunset, now this way, now that. A school of fish flashing silver in the deep. Snowflakes and stars, sparkling-glittering-mocking as he reaches for them. Dancing out of his grasp before he gets close enough to burn with the feel of them brushing his fingertips.

Fingertips to fingertips (… _whose?_ ) in the frozen howling wind, but too late, not enough, out of reach, out of _time_ , out of—

“Good afternoon, Soldier.”

The General. The words. The call-and-response.

All the swirling pieces settle softly into place, a slow-motion blizzard of fat snowflakes piling up into velvet-soft banks, building up along the pre-ordained lines of his designation, his purpose, given to him by the General when he had—and was—nothing.

Everything’s clear now. Everything makes sense again. Everything is… right. Neat. Orderly.

He draws a shuddering breath, cuts his eyes over to meet the General’s, to stare into the source of purpose and stability. “I am ready to comply.” His voice. Hoarse. Throat scratchy, catching on itself. He licks at his teeth, tastes rubber and blood. Licks at his lips, tastes salt—sweat-salt and blood-salt.

That… Happens, sometimes. If his mouth opens too wide, or his jaw clenches too hard, or someone’s fingers linger too long near his mouth. It… Isn’t supposed to happen. He isn’t supposed to bleed, isn’t supposed to split his lips with the force of his screams. Isn’t supposed to bite. It’s a failure on his part, but one that isn’t worth dwelling on. Not now. Not when there’s a purpose.

And the General has called him up out of nothing. So there  _is_ a purpose, a task, a mission. There’s something he can do now, should do now. Something that will define him further, add another set of strokes to the page, a thicker outline, a border between the nothing that is him, that is codename Winter Soldier, and the nothing that is not him, that merely contains him and runs through him at once.

What is it? The fractions of a second that follow his response stretch and skew into a vast, cold universe of waiting for the General to grant him meaning, though he knows that distortion to be exactly that, just a trick of his damaged mind. A temporal hallucination, another failure to be overlooked if he is to have the presence of mind needed to comply.

“I have need of your services, Soldier.” The General is brusque, but not impatient. His voice is a clipped instruction set, trimmed of all excess. Easy to latch onto, easy to follow. “You will shadow me for the week, possibly longer.”

The Soldier breathes, feels the air rushing at his throat, the catch of it along friction-burned vocal cords. “Understood.”

A shadow op. Those are good. Those let him be near the General, let him follow the man’s every movement, let him be of immediate use, let him unapologetically bask in his presence. Let him see the results of his compliance in real time…and observe his failures with the same immediacy, so that he can be properly corrected, honed, sharpened into the tool the General needs him to be.

Shadow ops are the closest thing he can get to the way it was  _before_ , when he was nearly always at the General’s side, when he was never more than a room or two away, when the General would enter the field with him, would direct him in person, would rely on him for protection while counting on his performance to accomplish mission objectives. Shadow ops are…

The General turns to leave and a stab of panic floods through him—no! he is to shadow, he was told to shadow, has been allowed to shadow, but he is still restrained, still hooked up to the IV, to his chair, cannot follow, cannot shadow, cannot comply and the General is  _leaving_ and he—

“Come to my office when you’re prepared for base duty, Soldier.”

He sags back into his chair as the panic releases him, lets his head fall back against the headrest, into position, looking up at the halo—idle, inert, minding its own business now that it’s done its task of arranging him into a useful object once more, aligning the edges of his emptiness so that he may better serve.

It is alright that he is still in his chair, still locked in and hooked up and whatever else. He will shadow the General when he has been made fully ready for it. The General understands. The General understands everything, knows how to offer relief, comfort, even when he hasn’t earned it yet. Even on those occasions where he doesn’t earn it at all.

He ignores the white coats and the support team wearing them, lets them bustle about shining lights in his eyes and moving their fingers around in front of his face for him to follow.  _At a distance, though_ , he notes somewhere in the back of his mind with a little mental hum of mingled satisfaction and sorrow. He’d have to lunge to get a bite in, might not even succeed then, with the restraints still holding his arms.

He taught them that, to keep their distance. It’s a shame they learned. A shame they are so cautious that he cannot hurt them if he needs to, cannot defend himself against them or protest in any meaningful way. Also a shame that he has chased away some of the only people who ever interact with him, has ensured that much less contact, that much less connection, that much more isolation.

It’s not his place to connect with them, of course. They are people. He is not. The cornerstone of his existence, that. But sometimes…

Sometimes there is someone new, who has not yet learned to speak  _over_ him, who makes eye contact, who speaks  _to_ him. It doesn’t last long. They will learn from observation when he lashes out at someone else. Or they will learn from verbal instruction when the others share warnings and wisdom. Or they will learn firsthand when they are tasked with intubation and he attacks the hand that holds that tube.

They always learn, and quick. They learn to keep themselves safe. He doesn’t learn. Or he does, but then he forgets the lesson he was taught. Forgets, sometimes, even the lessons he’s taught them. Is surprised to discover that they have changed a protocol he relied on to more effectively prevent a procedure he dislikes, or have added a new protocol to keep him docile, distant, apart from them.

The increased distance between their fingers and his teeth isn’t actually necessary here, not  _after_  the halo. He knows these technicians, in the vague, general sort of way he knows most of the support teams at the bases he’s been stored in. Knows they are loyal to the General, knows they are more afraid of damaging him than afraid  _of_ him.

As long as their fingers don’t try to pry open his mouth, hold open his eyelids, press his head to the side to put drops in his ears, they have no reason for concern. And they like to do those things  _before_ the halo comes down, so they can smudge out the inevitable struggle, can blur it into all the others that came before so that he can’t pin down exactly who among them he should hold a grudge toward.

That’s another thing he must have taught them, though he doesn’t remember doing it. Anonymity is safer than letting him remember precisely which one of them is which. He can only ever remember the shapes of them, which one is paired with which conversations, which one has which verbal tic, which personality, which hobbies and interests. Never which of them has done which things to him.

It’s just enough that he can give them designations, something his mind can hook onto until the next time under the halo. But even then, until they reveal themselves with chatter or a particular style of fidget, they are all just a white coat or a military uniform, one of the team, nameless and faceless and protected from focused retaliation. It keeps them safe.

He’d like to retaliate right now, in fact, but they are all the same in their white coats. The ache in his sinuses and the sloshing nausea in his gut tell him that at least one person on this team fed a tube into his face and down into his stomach, at least one of them flooded him with nutritional slop, at least two of them braced his head so that he could not twist away.

But which of them is which? He has no idea. None of them bears teeth marks, none of them bleeds, none of them has a darker frown for him than any of the others. If he already got them, they’ve hidden it. If he has yet to get them, he doesn’t know where to strike. He taught them that it was safer that way. And they learned.

He misses them, sometimes. Misses the eye contact. Misses the closeness. He’s not fond of the support teams, or any members on those teams. And he doesn’t remember any of them in the specific way he remembers handlers. But he still misses them. Negative stimulus is still stimulus. He doesn’t have to be fond of something to feel its absence keenly.

Anyway, fondness is reserved for handlers who earn it. Or for the General, the man who made him, who formed him out of nothing, who cannot and will not ever be forgotten. Even when it is someone else who reads out the words he can never quite hear, someone else who greets him with his designation and asks for his compliance, it’s the General who stands out from the procession of handlers and inspires the warmth of well-done and good-job and I- _trust_ -you.

No one else he’s ever met has put their trust in him. Not really. The General’s handler son with the sweet tooth has come close, sometimes. Sometimes not. There was a mission, at some point, to accomplish some objective that is long since lost to the holes in his mind, and after that mission, the flickering trust went out like a candle in a stiff wind. He can still trust the Soldier, and does, sometimes, briefly. But it’s edged with wariness now that was not there before.

That sort of wariness is a pricking needle along his skin. Not enough to hurt, not enough to damage, not by itself. But it replicates, spreads, crawls across the surface of him over time. And he is jabbed with that wariness from all directions—unaffiliated staffers on base, support teams of all stripes, all his handlers except the General. And as much as he hates it, they are right to be wary. It’s smart of them to keep their distance.

Because too many tiny pinpricks will cause even the thickest leather to tear at some point. And even the hardest calluses can be sheared off to leave raw flesh open and vulnerable. And even he cannot predict when it will be too much, when there will be too many scrapes of the needle-fear, too much wariness, too much care taken, and he will find an outlet for his frustration. Or his frustration will find an escape. Whichever. 

And in the end, if they will fear him either way—whether he lashes out or limply complies—why not let them have a reason for it? People like having reasons for the things they do. They’ll bend their minds into all sorts of contorted shapes in their efforts to rationalize their behavior. He’s doing them a favor when he snarls at them, when he lets his expression slide into a frown while staring them down from across a room.

He’s just making it easier for them to do what comes naturally when faced with something predatory and alarming and wrong like himself. Useful but distasteful. Competent but contemptible. Dangerous. No one should have to perform mental gymnastics before they feel free to embrace the fear response he apparently inspires by merely breathing.

Not when he can lend them a hand and bring the unseen threat their subconscious responds to out into the open with a flat stare, a hand twirling a knife, a thumb running along a holster, another fucking tale of lost fingers and worse.

So what if it’s a self-replicating cycle? Fear of him inspires him to cause fear; fear comes from fear like nothing comes from nothing.

And he hates it. He fucking _hates_ it.

There is a gloved hand on his shoulder, latex half on skin and half on the sweat-soaked cryosuit. He remains still. Sometimes they like to touch him, to rest a hand on him somewhere—arm, Arm, shoulder, upper back, pectoral—like they need to reassure themselves of something, or like they’re cocky performers sticking their heads in the lion’s mouth, tempting fate to show the crowd that the lion won’t clench its jaw. Not on them, never on them, they are special.

Sometimes he likes to remind them that they aren’t.

It’s a possessive touch, always, whatever else they mean by it. A display of ownership, proof of mastery. It would be degrading if he was a person. As it is, those occasionally cautious and sometimes mocking touches are… comforting in ways he suspects they should not be. It’s a sign of defect in him, that he looks forward to them, that he derives any comfort from them, or any comfort at all, from anything.

This time the hand is a warning, a heads-up, an indicator of further touch so as to avoid startling him. It’s merely practical precaution, but he appreciates it all the same. The technician lifts her hand and smoothly withdraws the tubing from his right arm, taking away the ZC drip that helps the halo’s effects last longer, and wiping away the dribble of blood from the insertion point, where the skin has healed up against the catheter and rips loose along with the tubing.

It’ll heal again well before they have the chance to hose him down properly. There’s no need for more than a cursory check for tearing from the spasms of his arm against restraints while the halo worked at his mind, and so that’s all she does before rolling away the medical supplies and clearing the way for the prep team to take over.

He is glad when the prep team finally gets cleared to start. The prep teams at this base are efficient. They don’t like to waste time, and they brook no nonsense, tolerate no infractions. He doesn’t have to consider his options or inspect his surroundings for opportunities or openings—they never give him any. He just has to follow direction and observe protocol, and he is good at that. They have him out of the chair, stripped, clean and in his off-duty tac gear in short order—lightly armed and on his way to stalk the halls in search of the General.

Of course, it isn’t really a search when he knows the layout of this base better than the roadmap of his own history, knows which hallway contains the General’s office, which his favorite conference room, which his quarters, however rarely he uses them now that he’s stepped away from the field.

Not a search, just a journey, complete with base staff scurrying out of his path and occasionally turning around entirely to avoid approaching him. It’s not new, not something to remark on or file away for later contemplation. The only people on any base  who are willing to stay in the same area once he enters it are researchers (to be avoided), trainers (to be obeyed) and handlers (to seek direction from).

Almost none of the other personnel on any given base, not even technicians who would happily spend hours at his side knuckle-deep in the Arm, are comfortable in proximity to him outside of the prep room. The prep room is where support staff are in the most danger, but it is also where they have access to their anonymity. Since their nameless, faceless, blurred shape of a self is all they have to protect them, they only feel safe in the confines of the prep room. Everywhere else, they scatter on sight of him.

That would prompt loneliness in most people, but loneliness is not something he has to worry about. Loneliness is for people. He may float in the middle of an empty bubble like a shark swimming through a school of fish, but he can lay no claim to loneliness.

Sometimes, he really hates that, wishes he  _could_  lay such a claim, thinks it might be comforting to be allowed loneliness instead of merely being alone. For all that he has gathered that the concept of loneliness is considered something bad, to be avoided, he thinks it would be nice to have a term to use to describe being perpetually disconnected from everyone around oneself. He might like to have a name for something like that. A name he was allowed to use for it, even just every once in a while. 

But there really isn’t time for dwelling on isolation, and no cause for it in this instance. He’s to shadow the General and that is the opposite of lonely. He is connected to the General, never feels isolated if the General is nearby, instead feels the lull of rightness, the lazy knowledge that there is nothing to go chasing after, that it is all right here, only one utterance of permission away. 

And he is to have an entire week, maybe more, at the General’s side. A week in which... what?

What will the General be doing on base for a solid week that requires his Soldier to be on hand? Or will he be leaving base? The General no longer goes into the field, and the Soldier has an... admittedly vague recollection, but a recollection all the same, that he was an unpleasant surprise when the General brought him to his home. Once. Years and years ago. There had been an ultimatum. The General’s wife had put her foot down, as well as several other things, most of them with considerable force. There were broken dishes.

So it won’t be the house in Perm, if they do leave the base. He knows that much for certain. The General wouldn’t bring him home again. The dacha, maybe. He’s allowed there. Or a meeting at one of the other bases, perhaps. That would make sense. He’s been of use as a silent menace, a threatening presence in the corner while the General makes his points and secures however much of the scarce funding he wants for the project.

If they _are_ going somewhere, and not merely running drills on the base, will the Soldier be handling the transportation, or will there be a transport team? He doesn’t recall the last time he was tasked with piloting anything, but that skill set always comes back quickly once he decides to do it.

Regardless of what the General does or where the General goes, he will have his Soldier with him. A lovely, week-long shadow op. It doesn’t matter what or where; he’ll be with the General again, almost like old times.

If he were a person, maybe he would smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter:
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.


	3. Prelude | The General: The future will not build itself

**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Saturday evening, 10 September 1960—**

One of the regrettable things about life is that paperwork grows in direct proportion to one’s rank. Heading up an entire branch of Department X has meant scads of paperwork. Folders stuffed full of reports, piled on top of each other, breeding in the shadows before he can stamp the appropriate message on them or scrawl out a signature. It had only gotten worse when he left the field.

He’s fallen behind on it again, his attention taken up with more important matters than the bureaucracy of ferrying supplies and maintaining facilities equipped to further the development of the Winter Soldier project. The paperwork cannot wait, particularly the current dialogue with that disturbing little mad scientist in America, but neither can this introduction of his Soldier and grandson. Not if things are to go to plan. And they really must go to plan. It’s a golden opportunity, and he’s running out of those.

The boy will be grown in the blink of an eye, and then it will be too late, not just to test the theory, but to reap the inevitable benefits when he is proven correct in his hunch. There will be other grandchildren who are appropriately young, and very soon, but Vasily is an ideal candidate in large part because of his father’s familiarity with the project and the super soldier at the heart of that project.

He moves to hand another folder to his Soldier to be put into the travel case and doesn’t even complete the motion before the folder is taken from him. It’s not the best use of his Soldier’s time and skills, but he knows his Soldier has an appreciation for the mundane elements of life, born from an existence spent outside those banalities looking in.

His Soldier is, he knows, not so much envious of the things he sees people doing—he’s more disciplined than that—but intrigued. Curious, and always a combination of more perceptive than is ideal and amusingly off the mark. He is probably viewing his participation in this tedium as a reward of some kind. And, well, let him. It hurts nothing.

If this week goes as he suspects it will, his Soldier can use the early reward. Has preemptively earned it, even. Despite his son’s misgivings and concerns—entirely legitimate, seen from less knowledgeable vantage points—he’s as confident in the pending introductions as he’s been of anything. Almost more confident.

They’ve had their Soldier for fifteen years now, and he’s never once proactively harmed a noncombatant of his own volition. Not when given permission to do so, nor when the action is presented as a request. Not when there is a threat hanging over him for noncompliance, nor when there is a reward presented as added motivation. Not when drugged, nor when electrocuted. Certainly not when left to his own devices.

His Soldier will readily take down any sensible, logically designated target he’s pointed at when ordered to do so. Give him a sound reason, even one that only seems sound on the surface, and he won’t question that reason, so long as he sees the logic in it. So long as he understands. So long as the target is one that makes sense _as_ a target.

And they’ve found repeatedly that he will attack support teams when overcome with stray memories or blinded by outrage at finding HYDRA within striking distance. In the former cases, he doesn’t often seem to know what he’s doing until he has stopped doing it, and even then, he is often surprised to see what has happened. In the latter case… Rarely has the General had occasion to be so very pleased with what is officially marked down as a malfunction.

HYDRA has its uses, mostly in the person of Arnim Zola, whose name cannot be spoken aloud for a variety of reasons and must be redacted from any physical record for many of those same reasons. But while occasionally useful in furthering the project, HYDRA is at its core a fascist rot that will corrupt anything it touches for too long. It’s a dangerous game, balancing its threat and its usefulness.

His Soldier’s abhorrence of the organization and any member of it foolish enough to blatantly display their loyalties helps. If nothing else, his Soldier keeps HYDRA affiliates on their toes, largely unable to settle down and dig in deep. There are a handful of units entirely compromised, but it’s nothing as bad as what’s become of the Americans.

But while HYDRA remains a target for his Soldier and nearly guaranteed to set him off, and while they have learned over the years how to minimize those damages, they’ve tested and tested him again trying to unlock a hidden viciousness they were certain was there, somewhere, deep inside him—and found him lacking. Whatever the Red Skull’s pet scientist had tried to put in the Sergeant hadn’t taken root, or rather, hadn’t grown to plan.

The skill was there, the unnatural speed, strength, endurance; there was no arguing that. But the gleeful savagery was as absent as some of his memories. Maybe it had spilled out alongside those memories after the fall. Maybe it had never been there to start with. He doubts he will ever know, but he has his suspicions. 

He’d witnessed the Sergeant at work in Kronas, and there had been a certain ferocity to him, but _not cruelty_. He had seen the man take out his targets from a distance and slice them apart from closer in, had seen the results of his actions the prior night as advance scout for their joint operation, the bodies of guards and patrolmen littering the snow, necks broken, jugulars slashed, barbed wire still wound about throats and cutting into the frayed, graying flesh.

And, while waiting with the rest in the darkness of the forest, he’d heard nothing during the creation of that string of corpses. Not a scream, not a yelp, not a thump of body hitting snowy earth. He had known then that there was a brutal efficiency in the Sergeant, available to call up on command. But those had all been combatants, and HYDRA as well. And they’d been clean kills if he could manage it. Expedient. The quickest, most efficient means to the end.

The General had been impressed—and suspicious. The Sergeant was an excellent marksman, even in the dark while scouting ahead and setting up their path to the bunker. Was almost as quick in combat as the American super soldier, later, when everything had predictably fallen to shit on contact with the enemy and it was melee at best and chaos at worst.

And once during that pitched battle—just once, just for a moment—the Sergeant had been _exactly_ as quick. Had matched Captain Rogers so well in the speed of his reflexes and the power of his punches that if someone had told him that the Sergeant was the super soldier and not the Captain, he might have believed them. And then, as if he’d felt the attention, the Sergeant had seemed to catch himself, had visibly slowed down. Had switched to firearms and thrown knives.

Not just power and speed, but control. Rogers had no reason to rein himself in, had cavorted and spun about, smashed his ridiculous target of a shield into any enemy in range—and that included throwing distance. But the Sergeant had contained himself, had hidden the extent of his abilities, had hinted in that action that there were even more to be found under the surface.

It hadn’t taken a genius to put things together from the intelligence available, or so he’d thought, back in that burned out village with its dead-eyed orphans and smoking remains. Maybe it had, though. The Americans certainly hadn’t expended much effort to collect their second super soldier. Had merely grieved and moved on, as if they hadn’t been aware of what they had. A typical American reaction, that, overlooking what they had.

The General hadn’t overlooked anything. The pieces all lined up and the picture they formed flashed super soldier in glowing letters over the Sergeant’s head. More, the intelligence he gathered in the weeks after Kronas had pointed to a super soldier commissioned by Schmidt himself, crafted by his worm of a mad scientist. No doubt intended for use of a very different, much less noble sort than the uses the Americans put their Captain America to.

He suspects that there was an attempt to instill some darker HYDRA value, and that the attempt had been a colossal failure. It’s difficult to move beyond suspicions without a surer understanding of the serum’s properties. But while they have the results of Zola’s experimentation and therefore a certain amount of cooperation from that odious little beast—visitation rights, perhaps, some twisted custody arrangement—they do not have access to anything more involved than regularly updated schematics for that Arm and the occasional surgical support.

Either way, they had not been able to unlock that kernel of spite they were so certain had been planted in the Sergeant’s psyche. No actions on their part or instinct on his had been able to prompt their newly forged Soldier to commit intentional, knowing violence against someone who was not actively hurting him or who could not be logically presented as a viable target.

Confuse him enough, drill an action into his head long enough before adding the target of that action, apply the right conditioning elements, and he’d blindly eliminate a target he was pointed at, even if the target was a child. But intentionally? Knowingly? While in his right mind, such as it was? His Soldier would sooner turn the gun on himself.

And did. Several times. It had taken considerable time and effort to convince his Soldier that suicide wasn’t just an undesired action, but a futile one. One that would not be allowed to work, and so should not be attempted. One that was a waste of time and resources. One he had no _right_ to pursue, just as he had no right to a name, or to a say in what happened to his flesh, even if what happened was that he killed innocents.

Some of the men on his early, unofficial team had been disappointed by the missing sadism in his Soldier, but it suited the General just fine to move on, to skip over that portion of the objective, to define for himself what _he_ wanted in a super soldier instead of accepting the model that had been handed down—stolen is, perhaps, a more accurate description—from HYDRA.

Schmidt had been a nightmare of a human even before his encounter with the serum, if the intelligence on the man could be trusted. And the Red Skull that had resulted from that serum was worse. Nazi scum, HYDRA scum, fascist scum, it made little difference which brand of filth was applied to him—the man was monstrous without the serum, worse with it.

No sense in pursuing a similarly monstrous super soldier if the one they’d acquired didn’t already lean in that direction. Far better to start from scratch, truly and entirely from the beginning, and define what they were looking for in Mother Russia’s super soldier.

Obedience was crucial, compliance, willingness to follow orders without thinking about them too hard. Anything less would eventually turn into a revolt. Witness the birth of HYDRA out of Hitler’s science division. He would make no such mistakes in his project.

Beyond that, loyalty was a close second. If obedience broke, loyalty would step up and ensure that commands were still followed, expectations were still met, or at the very least, handlers were still returned to. If Schmidt had ever held a scrap of loyalty for his superiors, he’d never have split from them. Would have grown his science division under their Nazi umbrella as Leviathan has happily thrived under Department X.

Loyalty was where the General had expected to run into trouble with his Soldier, but it was remarkably easy to obtain, if only the one time. After their new Soldier had latched onto him, it seemed no one else was worth his attention, as though he’d been casting about for a person to bestow that loyalty on and his net had snagged on the General and been too tangled up to shift from him.

Ideally, they’d have been working with a leader of men, someone others would follow, could rally around. But while the Sergeant had been the glue holding Captain America’s team together, he was clearly a support structure rather than a leader. And it had been a moot point, regardless. Almost all of the man’s charisma had spilled out of his broken skull at the bottom of that ravine, alongside the majority of his memories and the brasher parts of his personality.

Still, what was left had been more than sufficient to scrape together into his Soldier— _his_ Soldier for now, but soon to be as loyal to and protective of his grandson, if all went to plan. Because it is true, despite all indicators to the contrary. He is not going to be around forever, and someone will have to step up and take the reins of the project. Someone the Soldier’s loyalty can get tangled up on as firmly as it had on him.

It should be possible. His Soldier’s brain is in many ways as plastic and pliable as it is rigidly ordered. He can learn to be loyal to someone in their own right, as opposed to merely because of their connection to his primary handler. He just needs to be softened a little, allowed to grow attached so that the loyalty can build organically instead of being imposed from the outside.

His Soldier throws off externally imposed loyalty in ways that are dangerously volatile. It will have to come from within, will need to blossom up like a weed, from the fragments of the Sergeant they can never quite clear from the board.

And he already forms attachments to small and fragile things, delicate things, innocent things. They burn those attachments out and burn them out again, and he just keeps finding some new dainty object to fixate on.

Fine. So let his Soldier fixate on his grandson. The boy is inquisitive, outgoing, brash in his childish way. And he is small, young, and innocent. All the things he needs to be in order to continually seek out his Soldier even if he doesn’t get a positive response at first, second or seventh attempt. And all the things necessary for his Soldier to be distracted and curious.

If the weed is going to grow, why not ensure it’s an attractive one, something that can be cultivated intentionally and put to good use?

It’s a tricky business, arranging things just so in order to bring everything together. They will need their Soldier to be distracted, open to the possibility of getting attached to one of the fragile innocents he frequently seeks out while in the field. But the flaw had almost never surfaced when his Soldier was on a mission at his side.

And since his Soldier so rarely forgets himself when in his immediate vicinity and assigned a task, it will be imperative that the week is not seen as a task, not a mission, not an assignment. It is necessary to frame it as a shadow operation, because that is the terminology his Soldier knows for what would otherwise be termed “down time.”

But beyond his concession to that frame, he isn’t willing to add anything to the mixture that could key his Soldier up. Typically, an op like this one would include a few rounds through the obstacle course or sessions at the shooting range. Just a few exercises to expel excess energy and provide an opportunity for his Soldier to earn his approval. He would find it endearing how desperate his Soldier is to please him, if it didn’t also turn his stomach to be practically worshiped like that.

He supposes many would find the power intoxicating, or at least would imagine that it is. They would be wrong. The truth is, it’s exhausting.

And it comes with certain responsibilities, things he must ensure are provided for his Soldier, not out of charity or a sense of owing him, but simply because one should take proper care of one’s dependents. And because it’s the right thing to do, and at the end of the day, he has enough piled up on the wrong side of those cosmic scales to leap at a chance to even the balance.

Protection, for instance—as illogical as it might seem—is something his Soldier needs from him, something his Soldier cannot obtain on his own. Because despite his physical power and the occasionally highlighted fact of his ability to rip through a human like a bear through salmon and with considerably more accuracy, his Soldier is entirely at the mercy of often-cruel and always-callous project staff. His adopted son’s treatment of him is, lamentably, a prime example of this vulnerability—and one of the key reasons this coming week _must_ go well. 

His Soldier cannot be left without an appropriate keeper once he is gone. Turning him loose would be a cruelty after everything else they’ve done to him, and he thrives on certainty that he will not get out of the current replacement options. If his Soldier is to be looked after properly, he will need to begin grooming a replacement now, while there is still time for mistakes to be corrected and a proper rapport established. 

Given the difficulty they’ve had with transferring even a portion of his Soldier’s loyalty elsewhere, the only feasible options that don’t focus on re-breaking him and crafting him from scratch require playing the long game and winning. They’ll need to count on his drive to protect, his fixation on fragility and innocence, and his curiosity about essentially everything, and use those qualities to introduce another rocky outcrop he can get his loyalties tangled up on. 

For this week to _work_ , and not merely be an exercise in proving to his son that their Soldier is not the monster he fears, he needs his Soldier to be operating on a specific, narrow wavelength. He will need to be receptive, but not eagerly so. Passive, but not apathetic. Docile, but active enough to draw Vasily’s interest. Inquisitive without risking a challenge to his programming. Observant, but still able to overlook those gaps in logic that hide the more objectionable elements that surround him.

It is, unarguably, the most difficult frame of mind to keep his Soldier in for any duration longer than a few days, even for him. The balances get skewed without continual external course correction, and that guidance needs a very light touch to avoid setting anything regrettable loose in his Soldier’s head. He’s well-equipped to deal with whatever malfunctions or programming glitches arise. That isn’t a concern. But the more smoothly this week goes, the more stable the foundation will be for what is to be built on it.

And while most of these so-called shadow ops are filled with physical challenges for his Soldier to overcome and opportunities to stretch himself, this will have to be a relaxing week, paperwork notwithstanding. A week made up strictly of extended mission briefing, of soft skills acquisition, of training in civilian relations.

His Soldier will go absolutely stir-crazy if not provided with sufficient direction. Will actively prowl around for a task or purpose. There will, of course, be plenty of tasks to hand at the dacha, but none of them framed as a field op, either offensive or defensive. Intelligence gathering, at most. A shadow op. An extended chance to be helpful, close by and, above all, pleasing.

All while refraining from anything that could shift his Soldier from the narrow range of appropriate operation, anything that could nudge him toward a more traditional, and necessarily violent, set of mission parameters. He must be kept busy enough to remain engaged while being idle enough to invite distraction.

And there must be concrete tasks. His Soldier needs tasks, needs direction, needs orders to comply with. He likes to be useful almost to a fault. But he also has a low threshold for praise. The balance of allowing his Soldier to please him and do well on the one hand, and refraining from overloading his capacity to accept praise on the other will be tricky to maintain, particularly with an uninitiated audience in the person of his daughter-in-law.

He will need to add some failures in the mixture, and will likely need to create those failures both in his Soldier’s mind and in the objective, observable arena everyone else lives in—his Soldier is not prone to actual failure; they’ve had to become adept at fashioning failures out of his successes. He suspects Polina will find her newfound place at the insiders’ table to be a deeply uncomfortable one. But with a properly curated experience of his Soldier, she should come around.

There are certain necessities when managing an asset like his Soldier. She might not want to acknowledge them at first, but his Soldier’s programming runs deep enough and strong enough to more than withstand what pressures she is likely to place on it. The General smiles to himself. His Soldier is more likely to lecture her on the nature of personhood than to be swayed to her point of view. 

Still, the week will be a challenge for them all. He feels up to that challenge, and is certain that his Soldier is, as well.

This little trial run, in fact, will afford him the opportunity to assess his Soldier’s programming in a much more demanding light than the usual inspections. His Soldier will be faced with a new situation around most corners, and that is when he’s least able to maintain appearances. If there are cracks, they will show. If there is a problem, it will be easily noted and corrected for.

And so, he is hoping to conduct both the inspection of his Soldier’s programming and conditioning, and also the implementation of his latest efforts to ensure the future of the Winter Soldier project. And possibly, just barely possibly, he will also catch up on the self-replicating paperwork burying his desk.

Like this choice piece of nonsense. He scowls at the offending folder and chucks it in the bin instead of pushing it aside for later. He’s rejected their request five times already this year; it shouldn’t even have reached his desk a sixth. Though he does know _how_ they managed to slip it in.

He’ll need to have another conversation with Vera about what he will and will not do with his Soldier—and what he will and will not tolerate by way of being handled or led. There are many, many doting husbands in this world who will gladly change their plans to please their wives. He is not one of them and she knew that going in.

Bronislava Nikanorovna can train her latest crop of widows all on her own. The Red Room has managed without the use of his Soldier for decades, and they can continue doing so, regardless of their supposed need. If they wanted girls who were easily trained, more tractable, they shouldn’t have started collecting orphans for their project. Girls who were freely handed over by their parents were a much better option, and far more easily sourced.

And though he can see why they changed their protocol—and while he concedes that he might have played an indirect role in that—the results of their paradigm shift aren’t his problem. He owes them no favors, and if Vera feels _she_ does, that is her concern, and not his. It does not involve him, and it certainly doesn’t involve his Soldier. Sending his Soldier out to Belarus for however long might please Vera to no end, and it might alleviate some of the bitterness he and the Red Room’s directors hold between themselves, but that is no reason to capitulate at this point.

Even if it were, he can’t go back on his decision now and let them think they wore him down. That is how to ensure an endless stream of such attempts to undermine his project, to roll it into their Red Room and necessitate that he step back, to retire as Vera no doubt would like. No. Unless and until there is more in it for him than for them, he won’t be playing their game. He might send their seventh request—because there will be a seventh—back to them with the interior pages scorched.

He sighs and indicates an entire stack as needing to go into a travel case, and then walks to the window to watch the setting sun while his Soldier arranges files for him. Best to keep him occupied. He’ll save the newest mathematics workbook for later, when he needs to sleep. If it’s anything like the last one, his Soldier won’t even have looked up from the pages once before dawn.

A dozen cadets stagger across the lawn below in a loose formation that will need considerable work before they are worth the stitching on their uniforms. That’s one of the benefits of proximity to Perm and its military academies, though—a steady stream of new blood on hand for when the current recruits fail utterly and must be relocated to less strategically important bases. 

There was a time he would be shaping those young men, heading up missions and not shuffling papers. All the same, he supposes, these papers do direct men, do result in transferral of resources, rearrangement of assets, training drills and initiatives started and canceled and put on hold. A different battlefield but with the same principles at play.

He doesn’t regret his decision to leave the field work to others, to remain behind and direct his troops—his Soldier, more often than not—from a distance.

 _Mostly_ doesn’t regret it.

There are certainly times he wishes he _had_ returned to the field, moments when he misses watching his Soldier in action, being the one who observes the preternatural stillness of his Soldier on alert, perched high up in his nest, waiting for the perfect second in which to end a life. Or to watch his Soldier tear through everything in his path, a hurricane of violence rending to pieces anything that didn’t retreat, and a number of things that had tried.

But Prague had taught him better than to put himself in harm’s way, had shown him his mortality in lurid, inescapable color. He cannot ensure the safety of his countrymen or hone his Soldier’s usefulness if he is, himself, in the line of fire. He will be a distraction to his Soldier, and more than that—he is irreplaceable as of yet.

He had hoped that his sons would be fitting keepers for his Soldier, could split the duty between them, keep the leash taut, lead the Winter Soldier project to greater heights. Possibly throw HYDRA out of the country before it had too firm a stranglehold. And beyond merely hoping it could happen, he had honestly thought it _was_ possible for them to work together, right up until Cambodia.

But Vladimir doesn’t have the stomach to do what is necessary, and Aleksander is all too eager to do _more_ than is necessary. They pull in opposite directions, and he knows his Soldier far too well to assume he could handle such a thing as two masters as different from each other as his sons. His Soldier will need a single point on which to anchor his loyalty, and those two cannot sit close enough to one another to serve as that point.

He needs to try again. Needs someone new, someone fresh. Someone who can be trained up to serve in his place, and who, crucially, can return his Soldier’s loyalty in equal measure. Someone who will protect his Soldier just fiercely as they are protected.

Aleksander might have been young enough for it, if he’d started on the boy as soon as they’d acquired what was left of the Sergeant, if he’d known there was a need for specific damage control early on and could have corrected certain misunderstandings before they festered. But while he’d done what he could with the boy, the disaster of a mission in Kronas had left too many scars, and too deep.

He understands his son’s qualms about little Vasily. If ten was too young for Aleksander to see the horrors of war on his doorstep, three is certainly too young for Vasily to be introduced to the same.

What Vladimir is missing is that his Soldier is _not_ the horrors of war. His Soldier might foment war wherever they send him, has certainly been instrumental in bringing those horrors to the corners of the Earth, to individuals, families, and settlements alike. But that is merely what his Soldier does when commanded to do so.

He’ll also refuse to shoot a child, even if that child is strapped with C4. Will instead send a bullet through the detonator switch, rendering child and vest harmless. Will stand directly in the path of bullets meant for a handler. Will use his body as a shield against exploding grenades and falling walls. Will cut himself open in the back of a transport van to save another’s life. Will pour his blood out, unflinchingly and without hesitation, to save that life—and then shoot the witnesses in the face, two bullets each.

The General rubs at his sternum, where he still aches every winter since Prague. It’s the only concession to his pain that he has ever allowed himself where there is anyone to observe. His Soldier has managed for years to hide that secret where not even the excavation team can dig it out when they have a hunch about what they’re hunting. The General will do nothing to sabotage his Soldier’s efforts on that front.

His Soldier is many, many things. But not a threat to his grandchild. Never a threat to his grandchild. The General suspects that if he were removed from the equation, if Vasily was not _his grandchild_ but merely _Vladimir’s son_ , there would still be no threat. Regardless of what Vladimir has had to do as a handler, the orders he has had to enforce, the reprimands he has had to administer, his son would be safe from retaliation.

Not _despite what_ his Soldier is, but _because of who_ his Soldier is. Because of the truth of him, the only kernel they stumbled across, time and again, while searching his psyche in vain for a HYDRA-crafted, amoral horror-show of ruthless spite: a fiercely loyal man with a protective streak the width of the Motherland.

It’s just a matter of proving that point to Vladimir, driving home exactly how little threat his Soldier poses to the boy. It will be an interesting week, to be sure. He’s confident in the course of action, confident in his Soldier, confident that his grandson can be groomed into the keeper his Soldier needs, someone who can carry on when the General himself must finally step further back. When he next faces death and his Soldier is not on hand to defeat it for him.

The future will not build itself, and so he must ensure that others can build it in his stead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter:
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Arnim Zola, straight outta canon. Referred to by the General and others in a variety of ways, often derogatory and in the vein of mad scientist, odious little man, the Red Skull’s worm of a scientist, etc. The Soldier tries very hard not to think of him at all, but when he does, it’s usually part or all of “that man, those glasses, the bow tie.”
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Bronislava Nikanorovna Orlova, one of the current directors of the Black Widow program in the Red Room. Also known as Madame B. 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya. The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.


	4. Codetta 1 | Ustin: I just work here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Don't be alarmed by the "codetta" tag and the short length. This is just the conclusion of a section of this story. There's still lots more!)

**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Saturday evening, 10 September 1960—**

Oh, you’re so lucky, they said. What a wonderful turn of fate, they said. It will be great working under General Karpov, they said. A real war hero, they said. The best, they said.

What no one seems to have thought worth saying was this: General Karpov has a pet demon in human form, and that pet demon gets to wander around the base terrifying innocent human beings just trying to make a living by passing clipboards back and forth between handlers and scientists who are only marginally less terrifying than the pet demon himself.

The demon has a codename that sort of makes sense, if you think about all the worst aspects of winter and roll them into all the worst aspects of military personnel.

The Winter Soldier’s watchful hawk eyes, full of glacier ice, have been resting on him—if you could call anything about the man restful—for the past five minutes. Feels like five hours. Why is he looking at him? What has he done that is interesting? How can he stop doing it so that he is not interesting anymore?

Being interesting to the Winter Soldier is the last thing he wants. That is, he imagines, how people die in that prep room. They were interesting and the Winter Soldier was curious enough to rip them open and poke around inside to find out the why and how of them.

Ustin tries to ignore it, to put it out of his mind, to hold his clipboard steady to receive General Karpov’s signature, to hold his bladder steady so that he doesn’t embarrass himself past the point of dying from the shame of it.

He will not wet his fucking pants in front of a decorated war hero. He will not. He will _not_. Even if the Winter Soldier is glaring at him by said war hero’s shoulder like he’s an actual hawk perched there and thinking about ripping up his face with his talons.

God, the air is heavy in here. He’s been in this office before, has held out clipboards for signatures before—in this very office, even—and the air has never been so suffocating and close as it is now.

How does General Karpov even breathe in this room, with the Winter Soldier standing just to the side over there and obviously contemplating violence? The man must have solid steel balls.

His own balls are a lot more vulnerable, and he clears his throat again, tries to drag his voice out into the room even though it wants to cower in his throat. “If— If you, um… Please, could… Uh, s-sign the…”

Oh, oh no, he’s moving, the Winter Soldier is—

Okay, not so bad. He’s just turning a page in the book that he is not reading.

Ustin knows he’s not reading the book. He knows what it looks like when people don’t bother to read things—he’s the one holding the clipboard full of things that are not being read, more often than not. He’s read more top secret documents than the people signing those documents. No one reads much of anything in this department, which is another thing no one thought to add to the litany of how wonderful it would be, getting assigned to this post.

And the Winter Soldier isn’t even trying to pretend to be reading that book, because his dagger-sharp gaze doesn’t shift in the slightest, just stays zeroed in on him like he’s a little scrap of meat on the end of a pole being dangled about.

General Karpov rescues him, sort of, by turning from his window and crossing the room, putting himself more directly between Ustin and the Winter Soldier and breaking that eye contact for just a scant second.

It’s all the time Ustin needs to look away, to look somewhere else, to look down at the clipboard maybe, or at his feet, or at the floor that will not swallow him to save him from General Karpov’s pet demon.

The clipboard is lifted from his shaking hands and inspected with a little frown he can see out of the corner of his eye, and then General Karpov is looking backwards over his shoulder, at the Winter Soldier.

“Knock it off,” he snaps irritably, and then puts his attention back on the clipboard. General Karpov is one of the very few who actually read everything before signing. It’s probably why his desk is a mountain of paperwork.

“Yes, General,” comes the murmured reply, soft the way a lynx’s paw is soft in the snow while it stalks its doomed prey, before the claws come out to vivisect whatever unfortunate beast has strayed too far from safety.

He’s got to stop listening to that radio program on wildlife. All the hawks and lynxes and whatever elses are giving his imagination too much fuel.

“This is not the time for your little games, Soldier,” General Karpov says as he scrawls his name across the bottom of the pages, one by one.

“Understood.” The pet demon doesn’t even sound contrite. But he does at least lower his head so that he’s not staring directly at Ustin.

After a small eternity, General Karpov thrusts the clipboard back into his hands, and Ustin about drops it in his eagerness to grab it.

“Thank— Uh, thank you, s-sir.” Ustin licks his lips. How did they get so chapped? He looks over at the Winter Soldier, which is a mistake, and one he knows as a mistake even while he does it. So he makes his mistake, looks over, sees the demon with the book, and freezes.

The Winter Soldier’s head is down, ostensibly looking at the book’s pages, but his eyes are still gleaming up through his lashes and the fringe of bangs falling in his face. Like he’s a coiled viper just waiting to strike, waiting for the release command that will permit him to turn humans into meat.

General Karpov clears his throat, breaking the spell. “Anything else?”

“Um. No, sir.” Ustin salutes shakily with his free hand and backs out toward the door. He isn’t turning his back on the Winter Soldier. The wildlife program says that’s when tigers strike, when they see the back of a man’s head. The Winter Soldier doesn’t need an opening to slaughter him, but Ustin will feel better not giving him that opening, anyway.

He pauses to put his back to the wall in the hallway outside General Karpov’s office, breathes deeply, notices the sweat soaking his shirt. He’s going to feel gross until he gets to his room and can change. Maybe take a long shower and revel in being alive.

He couldn’t have been assigned to a regular courier job, no. Had to be the one courier job that could place him within the domain of General Karpov’s pet demon on a semi-regular basis. He has a feeling “Oh god, I’m so sorry, I just work here, please don’t hurt me” isn’t going to cut it when the Winter Soldier decides to bisect him with his own clipboard.

The hazard pay is not worth this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who's Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Ustin Gennadiyevich Bogachyov, clipboard-wielding staffer at the KGB facility outside of Perm. Not really called much of anything?


	5. First Impressions | Soldat: Arrangement and rearrangement

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday morning, 11 September 1960—**

He unloads the last of the General’s paperwork from the back of the car, pulling the third travel case of files from where it’s been wedged behind a box of what appears to be assorted foodstuffs and cooking paraphernalia. The bagged flour and whatever else is in there can wait until he has the General set up in the office upstairs, has his files neatly stacked on the desk so that he can begin his work whenever he sees fit to do so. Probably right off the bat, if prior experience can be trusted. The General doesn’t like paperwork, but he’s not one to shirk his duty, and he _does_ like getting things done.

This is, per the General, going to be an entire week spent at the dacha, instead of remaining on base. It’s not a new thing, trips to the dacha. It’s not even a new thing for the General to bring paperwork with him instead of relaxing. The General has too much paperwork, too many responsibilities, to ever truly relax. And the Soldier suspects the General doesn’t actually like relaxing. He knows how that goes. He hates it, himself, not doing something, not being useful. He was made to be useful. It’s his purpose.

No, the location and likely series of tasks are not new. This is, however, the first time he can recall being at the dacha in the presence of anyone who was not the General or the General’s remarkably cranky and vicious wife. There is to be some form of gathering, and the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth is here, somewhere, along with his family. The Soldier has yet to be permitted his perimeter check. The others could be anywhere. The General’s wife could not be anywhere. She tends to be wherever he least expects her, and armed. 

The office upstairs reveals no presence of the General’s wife, though, and her first order of business on arrival has, in the past, been to set up her own corner of this room. So she has presumably not yet left their home in Perm to join her husband at the dacha.

He cannot help but be mildly relieved by this. She is not a pleasant woman to be around, though she is affectionate enough toward the General. And that’s good—the General deserves for people to be affectionate toward him, and affection is not something the Soldier is permitted to offer. It’s a thing for people. It’s one of his many defects that he occasionally feels it, but he tries very hard not to act on it.

Through the lacework of the draperies in the office, the Soldier catches movement in the tree-lined patch of grass behind the dacha that serves as outside dining, as seating for leisure, as almost decorative space in contrast to the gardens in front of the dacha. The General’s handler son, tossing a ball toward a child and then encouraging the child to throw it back. There’s something about that activity that makes his head hurt, sends up the throb of back-away. He looks away. He’s been warned. It’s not meant for him.

Instead of watching out the window, the Soldier stacks the files on the desk exactly as the General had them in his office on base. After a moment, he thinks better of it. It is not his place to memorize the General’s filing system or to recognize the contents and subject matter of the files that lend themselves to that filing system. The General might not appreciate knowing that he had paid enough attention to replicate his desk back at base. That could be a reprimand in the making.

After a quick glance at the arrangement, the Soldier moves a few of them around, organizing by length of file, thickness of folder. Better. That’s orderly, but not the General’s order. It’s also external order, order that doesn’t depend on or hint at knowledge of the contents of the folders. He can’t help his eye for detail, but he can use misdirection to avoid a scolding.

Of course, this does utterly rearrange what the General had set up. Maybe _that_ will be what earns him a reprimand. Maybe he should mimic the General’s filing system after all. Maybe he should put something together that is close to the General’s organization so the General doesn’t have too much to rearrange later, but that’s also far enough away from it to look random, or to look like he’d tried and failed to recall the exact order of the files.

Sometimes the General is pleased by a lapse in his memory. Some of his failures are counted as successes because he is not meant to succeed. He licks his lower lip, debates. This… might be one of those times? He’s not sure how to feign forgetfulness. Usually there’s no need to pretend. His head is a sieve at the best of times.

He should have just dumped the files out, or left them in their cases, maybe just put the cases on or by the desk and waited for the General to unpack them to his liking. Maybe he could have stood by, taking direction—this file there, that file here, these files on top of those files.

He could always put the files back into their cases, exactly as they were—he thinks he can recall exactly how they’d gone into the cases—could pretend that he… got distracted by something up here. That sort of thing happens all the time. But he knows it’s too late to do that now. He’d have been finished with that in no time at all, and he’s been here too long for merely dumping or stacking, even accounting for a distraction.

The Soldier is in the middle of a fifth shuffle of the files when it occurs to him with a queasy rush that he’s actually been up here long enough that the General might suspect he’s been leafing through the files, reading them, crossing lines he would never cross. But maybe the General doesn’t know that he wouldn’t cross those lines. What if he feels the Soldier has betrayed his confidence?

He looks at the mess of files on the desk, feels the sickly flicker of panicked what-do-I-do dripping down his spine, feels the Arm start up a shaky calibration loop and get stuck with a plate out of alignment. The Soldier reaches over to nudge the plate back into position, closes his eyes, centers himself. It is what it is. There’s no changing it now. He resigns himself to a reprimand for _something_. It will be a surprise to look forward to, finding out which thing the reprimand will focus on.

He sighs, indulges himself in a bit of self-disgust. It’s too early in the week for this sort of idiocy on his part. He’ll deserve the reprimand when it comes, whatever it ends up being for. That much, at least, is certain.

He trudges back down the stairs feeling defeated, leaving the files on the desk in a halfway state between organizational strategies. He’d like to have put them in whatever order the General _wants_ them in, but he doesn’t know what order that is, and so it’s better he just give up, accept that he has failed, and go see to the rest of the supplies they brought.

That’s his intention, anyway. When he comes back in with the box of kitchen items, though, it turns out the handler with the sweet tooth has come back in as well. He has an armful of squirming child, and he looks as though he wants nothing more than to clutch that child to his chest and run. Run back outside. Run back to Perm. Run anywhere, but preferably far away from the Soldier.

It’s not an unusual reaction in people who come face-to-face with him unexpectedly. But it’s very much out of the normal range for a handler of any sort, and particularly for this handler, the General’s own son, who must surely realize that he is in no danger. Unless… Maybe what he’s anticipating is that the child is in danger? No, that hardly makes sense. Perhaps it will remain a mystery.

The child, regardless of its handler’s obvious desires for stillness, is having none of that. The Soldier watches curiously as the child alternates between waving its arms wildly and leaning precariously out toward the General, seated to one side at the dining table with a cup of tea, and actively pushing at the General’s son with hands mashing at his chest.

The Soldier has observed similar behavior in cats that do not wish to be held. Not firsthand, of course. Not personally. He doesn’t get attached to the base cats. He knows better: That ends badly. In this case, though, there are no claws, no hissing, no biting. There is plenty of high-pitched noise, though, and also grasping fingers and waved scrap of fabric clenched in a tiny fist. The floppy bit of fabric hits the General’s handler son in the face a few times before the child gets what it wants and is set down by its clearly reluctant handler—father, he corrects himself.

It—he—immediately zips over toward the General, moving past the Soldier as though he was a bit of scenery put in the room solely to be walked past. The Soldier can find no fault in that behavior. He, also, is drawn toward the General’s presence, occasionally has attention to spare only for the General, sometimes loses track of others in the room.

The box of kitchen items in his arms is not large enough to impede his view of the child as it—he, the child is male, is a person, is a he—holds his arms up toward the General and is pulled up into the General’s lap. The child is tiny, one of the smallest children he’s seen walking upright unaided. His arms and legs have lost their baby fat, are just twiggy little things with sharp angles for elbows and knees poking out of the sleeves of his shirt, the legs of his shorts.

But his cheeks are rounded softly and invite a flickering shadow of his mind to reach out and… he’s not sure. Maybe gently squeeze them. The urge makes no sense at all, so he dismisses it. Irrelevant, unwanted. If the General wishes for him to squish this child’s cheeks, the General will say so. Otherwise, he supposes his goal where the child is concerned will be not to trip over him. He is small, and he moves fast. He will almost certainly get underfoot at some point.

He has supplies to deposit in the kitchen, regardless, so he gives the handler son a nod of acknowledgement and moves past him into the kitchen. Now that the child is happily running tiny fingers over the stars at the General’s shoulders and the pins at his lapel—nothing formal, just the Winter Soldier project insignia—the General’s son seems much less concerned with removing the child from the dacha. That’s good, he supposes. Always better when handlers aren’t nervous around him.

It only occurs to him as he is placing items with like items—flour with flour seems the obvious choice, chocolate bars with chocolate bars, and maybe no one will make him eat one, eggs with eggs—that his initial assessment does make sense after all. The General’s son isn’t nervous about _him_ , the Soldier, but instead is nervous about him in relation to the child. Who must, obviously, be the General’s grandchild. As if the child would come to harm at his hands.

It’s a ridiculous thought. He would no more hurt the General’s grandchild than he would hurt the General himself. On some level, he’s vaguely insulted that this could be a concern for the sweet tooth handler. On more permissible levels, levels that aren’t quite so close to personhood, he wonders how he’s failed recently that would prompt such a notion in his handlers. He doesn’t _think_ he’s a threat to the General’s grandson, but if his opinion and a handler’s were put on a scale, he knows where all the weight would rightly be.

Maybe there _is_ something threatening about himself, something that he doesn’t know about. He could have forgotten something that would make the handler’s fear make sense. He isn’t what anyone would call a trustworthy authority on the subject of his own history and prior actions. Far, far from it. And he does kill a _lot_ of people. Sometimes kids, if that’s the message the General needs him to deliver.

By the time he has located every item in the kitchen and also put everything they brought in what seems like its most logical home, the handler has joined his father at the table, and is speaking in soft tones that hold a note of pleading without being alarmingly desperate.

The Soldier could pick apart the words being exchanged in the dining room with ease, but the conversation is not meant for him, and he purposely tunes out the meaning to give the General the privacy he otherwise could not have in such close quarters. He has found a different task, anyway, one he bends his whole attention to.

Or almost his whole attention. He’s not incompetent for all that he fails more often than he likes. He’ll keep a general watch over the dacha no matter what task he’s performing. Anything less is a failure of his mission to shadow the General.

In his search for an appropriate place to put the whisk—he knows that’s for whipping up eggs and things, but he’s not sure where that means it should go—he’s discovered an appalling mess of cutlery in a pair of shallow drawers. It’s a like a tiny, localized tornado went through the silverware. It just won’t do. He sets about putting the cutlery into better order, nesting all the spoons of like size, making sure all the forks and knives are pointing the same way and aren’t spilling over into each other’s compartments.

He continues to tune out the General’s conversation. He does _not_ tune out the light shh of footsteps on grass outside, or the scuff of soft shoes on the stepping stones leading to the kitchen door from the grassy area behind the dacha. That will be the mother of the child, no doubt. He hadn’t seen her earlier, when he watched the ball throwing that he carefully doesn’t dwell on, and she hasn’t been in the dacha this whole time, either.

He flicks his eyes up from the cutlery drawers, keeping his chin tucked low so that if the woman does look toward the windows on her way to the dacha, she at least won’t register movement. Through the lacy curtains that the General’s unpleasant wife prefers for exactly the same use he’s putting them to, he watches as the woman makes her way slowly along the stepping-stone path, eating what he assumes from the size and color to be blueberries out of her basket.

She’s pregnant, heavily so. No one had mentioned that in the briefing, but then, there really hadn’t been a briefing beyond “you’ll shadow me for a week” and “we’re going to the dacha, help me pack up the paperwork.” But there she is out in the yard, belly rounded, hair braided, basket on her arm. Her gait is almost a waddle, but that’s an unflattering thought and he quickly corrects himself. Her walk is a vaguely unsteady glide, and he itches to go hold her arm or something, so she won’t trip.

Her dress is nice, he decides as he sorts the spoons by feel, large ones here, medium there, small over to the far side of the drawer. Cute might be the word for her dress. It’s a loose cut, which of course it is for a woman so far along in her pregnancy. Empire waist, he thinks. A-line, flared skirt. Tea-length. It’s a foreign style. Made, not purchased. It’s nothing like the dresses in the shops.

It’s a bit of extraneous information—a bit of garbage, really—gleaned from one of the medical technicians who had gotten married at some point he doesn’t remember, and who would not shut up about the cut of the dress she planned to wear for her procedure. Or the nature of the dresses the other women would wear. Because she apparently had the right to dress them for her wedding like they were dolls.

He hadn’t cared then, and he doesn’t care now. But it had distracted him from his own procedure—from the fucking electric drill and the stuttering friction of drill bit on bone, the burning sawdust smell and the tiny snapping pop and high-pitched squeal of the drill bit punching through to the other side, the sharp scraping agony of the drill bit being yanked free, the pinching jolts of forceps digging around, the static buzz of the new tracker sliding into place and clicking online—and now he knows more than is necessary about women’s clothing. That seems like a fair exchange.

So the woman’s dress is cute, informal, an empire A-line with scalloped sleeves and a boat neck. The flared, tea-length skirt ends well above her shoes. Which are not shoes one ought to wear outdoors. He imagines her feet hurt, if she’s been out walking around all morning like that. Very little arch support in those shoes. They’re more like leather slippers. Patent leather, too, which is going to get scuffed to hell and back by the underbrush. Shoes for summer, not autumn. Shoes for indoors, not foraging in the woods.

He flips over the last of the forks, lining it up with the others so that they fit better in their compartment. Someone needs to get the woman better shoes. Maybe some boots. Forests are full of stray rocks and twisty roots that bite at feet and dig in painfully without proper footwear. He knows. He’s done more endurance training in the deep northern forests of Khabarovsk Krai than most professional wilderness survey crews. Proper footwear is critical to success. What if she needed to run from an attacker in those shoes? She’d trip and fall, hurt herself, hurt the baby.

Who sent her out into the forest to do the foraging all morning when she couldn’t be more than a month from delivery, if that? Other people should be doing the work for her, while she rests. Puts her feet up. Maybe has someone rub them. Her husband, maybe. What else is the General’s son good for out here if not looking after his wife’s feet. The Soldier shakes his head minutely, looks back down to scan the cutlery drawers.

Everything neat. Everything in its place. No tornadoes here. _Good job, Soldier. What next?_ There is an entire dacha, after all, and the General’s horrible wife is not present to wield a length of metal pipe or a handy torque wrench and drive him out of any room he settles in for more than a moment. There are almost too many options.

He wonders if the woman expects company, or if she will be startled by his presence in her kitchen. Maybe she didn’t hear the car arrive. Maybe she did, but expects they will all be in the main room. Perhaps she is like the General’s cantankerous wife, and he should leave her domain. Perhaps he should go into the other room before she opens the door.

He’s quick enough. He could do it without even a scramble. It would look natural, like he just… decided to no longer be in the kitchen. Like he had finished the task and was seeking another one from the General, which is not entirely inaccurate, or even partially inaccurate. He _has_ finished a task and would very _much_ like a new one from the General.

Except that the General is having a hushed conversation in the other room, and the handler with the sweet tooth is nervous when he is in proximity to the child. It makes more sense for the man to be nervous when the Soldier is in the same room as his wife, who is not a child to be spared and who isn’t the General’s blood relation. If the General’s son was going to be logical, he’d prefer for the Soldier to join them in the other room.

But the man doesn’t always exhibit logical reactions. Witness his pregnant wife foraging alone in the woods wearing a fucking pair of patent leather slippers. It should be the General’s son out there with a wicker basket in the woods gathering mushrooms and whatever else. It should be the pregnant wife who is tossing a ball and otherwise resting, and the husband who spends hours wandering around in the forest without protection or proper footwear.

And it _has_ been hours. He made note of her two dark brown braids when she was still visible through the lace curtains, had seen the the frizzed curls at her forehead and temples where the breeze has blown some flyaways out of the braids, and had estimated the duration of her errand. Wind speed being what it is, blueberry bushes being as short and scrubby as they are in these parts according to the almanac he was assigned to read at… at some point… and her hair coming loose to that extent: She’s been in the forest since a little after dawn, since the sun was bright enough and high enough in the sky to make it practical.

She has remarkable staying power for a pregnant woman. A lot more energy than he would have thought possible. More stamina. He’s impressed with that, even if he has nothing positive to say or think about her choice of shoe. She’s hardy enough to go on an hours-long gathering mission toward the end of a pregnancy. And resourceful enough to find and craft the clothes she wants despite the fashion dictated by the supplies in the shops. Tenacious, too, in all likelihood. But obviously prone to questionable decisions.

She fits into the family well, he decides, is a good match for her husband, her brothers-in-law, most of them. Not the Lieutenant. He’s in a class of his own that doesn’t bear thinking about at present. But the other ones are all strong, ambitious, good at what they do… and occasionally really fucking stupid. Though it’s definitely not his place to say so, and not even really his place to think it. Still, they do all have that combination of competence and idiocy, each in his own proportions.

It’s odd he’s never met her, given how good a fit she seems to be with the rest of the family. He thinks he’s met all the others, even if he can’t ever bring them to mind with much accuracy until he lays eyes on them. Maybe the General’s handler son is more protective of her than he thought. Maybe he will be more upset to have the Soldier in the kitchen with his wife than in the other room with his child.

The Soldier isn’t sure which is the least worrying course of action anymore. But, just as with the paperwork, he’s lost the chance to try to make that decision again, to choose a different strategy. Because now she’s at the door, and he really can’t just shuffle off with an air of having not noticed her. Now, if he leaves, he’s definitely fleeing. It’s almost never a good idea to show fear to anyone in the General’s family.

Well. He’s to be here a week, at least. It would be difficult to avoid being in her presence the entire time. So there’s no sense in avoiding her now, especially if doing so would put his internal unease on external display. If she does have a crowbar in that basket and chooses to use it, it will serve him right for rearranging her silverware uninvited. He will have asked for that. And then he will know her shape for sure, will know exactly what else to expect from her.

He supposes it’s time to see how good a fit this woman truly is with the rest, and maybe extend a little hope out into the universe that she doesn’t take after her horrible, _horrible_ mother-in-law.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.


	6. First Impressions | Polina: Of blueberries and soldiers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the wonderful [glittercake_20](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitterCake20/pseuds/GlitterCake20) for agreeing to beta this chapter! You're the best!

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday a little before noon, 11 September 1960—**

Oh, her throbbing, aching feet. Whatever was she thinking, choosing these shoes for the forest? And on their first wear, too.

They’re beautiful, of course, with their shiny patent leather toes in the most gorgeous buttery yellow. And with an open heel, no less! So daring, with just that strap over the top and not a full enclosed heel. Almost too daring to get away with, except that her husband has the right connections.

She doesn’t think anyone would dare to report her shoes when her husband is known to be a prominent figure in one of the many shadowy chapters of the KGB. They don’t report on her dresses, after all, and she makes those herself from fabric she probably shouldn’t have access to. Or, well, if they do report her dresses, nothing ever comes of it. One of the unexpected perks of her marriage.

Ah, she loves these shoes. They do not love her back, more’s the pity.

Polina twirls an escaped strand of hair around her fingertip to capture all the flyaways into one lock and then tucks it into her braid. Of course, she knows exactly what she was thinking, going for these darlings instead of anything more practical.

She’d been thinking that the Italian bar shoes her Vovochka had gifted her with were so lovely. That she couldn’t wait to wear them. That the girls at the office would be so jealous. And they would be, her coming back to work in a few months with not just photographs of her darling baby girl, but also new shoes, and some of the new dresses she’s been sewing for when she’s delivered and back to her usual shape.

Why that set of thoughts had blotted out the responsible part of her brain that knew she’d be on her feet for hours—that is the real question.

She suspects that question is answered in her little Anyechka, kicking merrily away at her insides. Such a feisty little one, and hardly letting up on her wiggling even this close; she can’t wait to meet her. But her Vasyenka had been a kicker, too, for all that he had calmed down near the end. And yes, she’d temporarily lost a good amount of common sense when carrying him, just the same as this time. Perhaps it was less the nature of her children and more her own nature while carrying them.

She’d laugh at herself, “Haha, Polinka, why have you done this to your own feet, foolish woman!?” She _would_ laugh, make a bit of fun of it, and then move on… but her feet are just killing her with every step, and she doesn’t think she could take being laughed at while dying of a pair of sore arches, even if the one pointing a finger was herself.

She’ll give her feet _some_ credit for not behaving quite so atrociously this time around. With her first pregnancy, oh, she’d just gone barefoot whenever it was an option that last month or so. Even her house slippers had been too tight, and she’d shamelessly stolen her husband’s instead. She hadn’t dared to hope she would be spared this time around, but what a relief it is. All the same, less swelling or otherwise, and credit awarded, her feet are still killing her, the traitors. They should be ashamed.

Polina takes a moment to rest on a convenient tree stump near the edge of the forest, leaning her walking pole so that it won’t fall into the leaves. Having to pick it up, and then pick herself back up, would be a poor conclusion to her morning. The sun shines just so through the thinning leaves overhead, and the stump is deliciously warm under her backside. Her morning has been more successful than she’d thought, and there are plenty of blueberries not just for a pie, but also for jam, and with some left for snacking on.

A good thing, too, since her father-in-law loves blueberries and is due to arrive today—and with the mysterious Soldier her husband has tried for years not to speak about no matter how much she wheedled and pried.

Of course, it’s not that she had thought she needed or deserved anything approaching an official security clearance. At the very best end of the spectrum, Polina knows herself to be a security risk when it comes to military secrets—the girls at the office will sense her new secrets on her and pounce the moment she returns from maternity leave, and they’d have been no different before.

To be fair, she smells out a secret just as fast as they do, and is just as likely to pounce as the other girls. But _she_ means well by it, just wants to know for the sake of knowing. Some of the others, she suspects, do not. Some, maybe even many, of the others mean to make reports to figures just as shadowy as her husband and possibly not as official.

One of her many brothers-in-law, Pasha, is always going off on a tirade about rumor mills and how every whispered word gets back to the wrong ears. And given that scandal that nearly escaped just last year, he’s probably right about whispers and rumor mills. She isn’t a rumor mill, of course. Secrets come to her to be buried. She would never pass them along.

Even if she didn’t have her reputation to maintain, it just would not do at all for her to go blabbing on about such things. Even if all the girls at the office were trustworthy and patriotic, which she knows they aren’t. You never could tell when the wrong people would be listening, and reporting every word to the authorities, who could come to all the wrong conclusions, and then it was disappearances and terror all over again. Everyone could do without that.

In this case—in the case of the mysterious Soldier she’s only been allowed to learn more about just last night—Polina is mostly certain that her husband and father-in-law _are_ the authorities. In some ways, this does make it less concerning that any secret content makes its way back to them—they know the content already. They generate the content.

But it would give them a reason not to trust her, and that would hurt more than secrets her husband has kept so far. He hadn’t told her in so many words that his primary concern was maintaining project secrecy, but she had heard it all the same. If she were to let slip official secrets, it would prove her husband right. And in the arena of “but I can _so_ keep a secret,” she really does want to win the argument.

Regardless, she does understand why her beloved Vovochka is ordinarily so tight-lipped about his work, and she has always tried to refrain from more than the occasional attempt to learn more about it. He’s right, after all. It’s for the best she not know much, is safer that way, not only for the project but also for her. But…

It’s just so mysterious, a man known only by a codename, seen only by people who are allowed to see him, going all around the globe on secret business, doing secret things. From what she _had_ managed to glean over the years, before last night’s revelations, “secret” in the Soldier’s case could be understood to mean both “secret” and “violent.” And didn’t that just make it so much more intriguing!

When she’d married Vladimir, she’d had no idea what sort of shadowy halls the military contained that her husband and his father walked down daily. And after she found out his branch of the military was not so much strictly military, but closely affiliated with the KGB, she’d still had only vague impressions of what it was he did on base all day.

Or on his daring “ops” and “missions” in the “field.” Oh, the mystery! The wondering if he was safe, the daydreams of his physical prowess, the extremes of the field, the hardships he endured and trials he overcame. Oh, he might complain that all he did was stretch out on a roof and watch the Soldier watch someone else—possibly to shoot them, she had thought then, and now knows for certain—but she knew it was more adventurous than that.

And now, why _now_ she knows that it’s not just KGB, but a secret branch inside of that organization that houses yet another secret branch inside of itself! It’s almost too much to be believed, except that it makes so much more sense given all the other little breadcrumbs she’s gathered over the years. And, she can’t help but think with a wistful smile, it makes her dashing husband so very much more appealing, being involved in something so, so secret.

And now the long-hidden center of that secret life was on his way, even at this very moment. She can hardly be expected to mind her own business all of the time, and now that she is finally to meet this Soldier, now that he is staying at the dacha an entire week…

Even the pieces of information her husband has shared with her in preparation for this week are not enough to satisfy her curiosity. They only whet her appetite for more information. The Soldier doesn’t speak much. _Why not?_ The Soldier doesn’t ever leave the base except on assignment. _But why?_ The Soldier’s dangerous. _Ooh, how dangerous?_

Poor Vovochka. He’d about died. But she had reassured him that all was well and she would of course be careful not to upset anything or put herself in any danger. She’s not sure he had been as relieved as she intended, but he does like to worry. There is probably nothing to be done about that. He will worry either way, but she has done her wifely duty in reassuring him. Whether he allows himself to relax is up to him.

She reaches into her basket, nudges a few mushrooms aside and withdraws a handful of blueberries to eat. They’re tart and crisp-ripe, not yet mushy with age and collected before the birds got them all. A truly good foraging session this morning, even if getting down to some of those mushrooms is a lot easier than getting back up after. Those mushrooms will be lovely with dinner. It’s worth the sore feet and the aching back.

“Ah, well,” she sighs, looping her basket on her arm and reaching for a nearby branch to help her hoist herself back to those very same sore feet. Between the branch and her walking stick, they manage the task with only a little wobble and one tiny grunt. The sooner she gets back to the dacha, the sooner she can make that pie. A freshly baked pie will be a lovely surprise to present the General with when he arrives… and maybe she can tempt that Soldier with a slice. Perhaps he has a sweet tooth to rival her husband’s. Oh, what if he likes her pie? What if he enjoys _all_ of her cooking?

Perhaps she can send even more baked goods to the base with her husband, knowing that they will not be overlooked or left out to gather flies after the initial interest has worn off and the staff have drifted back to their posts, but will instead be devoured by a ravenous Soldier, kept too much to himself to benefit from the love baked into a proper loaf of bread. If he’s so very top secret, then his mother and grandmother cannot be providing for him.

And he can hardly have a sweetheart who will bury him in sweet rolls and pastries. Not if it is as her husband says, and he is kept apart from others for everyone’s safety and is rarely between missions for long. That’s no way to attract or keep a lady friend. And so this Soldier, who clearly has no time for courting or contact with his mother or other relations, must be terribly in need of nurturing.

Polina appreciates a good challenge when she sees one. And this? What a challenge. To chisel away at the aloof external shell and deposit all manner of baked goods to ensure that this Soldier is well provided for. She can manage the extra portions, certainly.

She’s daydreaming about pies and imagining what sort of face a secret Soldier would wear on receiving a steady stream of baked goods and hearty home cooking—surely, it will be an appreciative sort of expression, a warm smile, maybe; there could even be a better working relationship with her husband, bonding over a mutual enjoyment of little cakes and iced buns—when she opens the back door into the kitchen.

And she’s still got her mind on the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from providing for lonely secret Soldiers when she enters the kitchen and closes the door behind her. So she doesn’t actually see the man leaning back on his elbows against the counter by the window until she’s already put the basket down on the counter not three feet away from him.

What registers first is the shine of something metal where she doesn’t recall having left any such thing laying around. It’s a metal arm. It has segments almost like one of those American armadillos she saw a picture of once when Yulia came back from a vacation and shared her photographs around the office. Yulia’s armadillos had not had red stars on their shells, and had not been shiny, besides.

The rest of him filters in after that in something of a rush. Tall, broad-shouldered, _very_ attractive, wearing an awful lot of leather, and looking like he doesn’t think he belongs there and is waiting for her to tell him so. His eyes are a semi-worried, clear blue-gray that stand out in his face and make her want to take a step back, just so she has a better view, and then maybe take a few steps forward for an even better view than that.

Whatever she might want to do, however, her feet stay firmly planted on the floor as she looks him up and down, taking in the many details available. _So_ much leather, and a gun, too, even though her husband always makes a point not to wear his in the dacha. And so tall, but without looming. And both trim and muscular, all at once, in a way that should not be possible.

And in a way that is very different from every other member of the military she’s encountered, possibly due to their looser uniforms and his… very much more form-fitting uniform. And what a form it fits. She does hope that the warmth she feels in her cheeks is due to the kitchen being a naturally warmer location than the fall weather outside. It would not do to blush prettily for anyone but her beloved Vovochka.

“Oh,” is all she says for a moment.

Well, they’ve clearly already arrived, haven’t they? So much for her surprise pie. And this is the Soldier, all however many muscular pounds of him, looking lost and confused in her kitchen, for all that he’s leaning on the counter like he owns it. Or perhaps like he hopes to blend into it like a chameleon frozen in place. Poor lamb.

Her question is answered, though. This is the sort of face a secret Soldier wears when confronted by the baker, and she doesn’t imagine he’d look much more at ease when confronted by the baked goods—though she has every intention of finding out for sure. A well-made loaf of sweet bread wins everyone over, and she makes the best sweet bread in the office.

If she’d looked only at the snugly utilitarian cut of the pants and vest, the boots—oh, combat boots, her very favorite look on a man—the oh-so-dangerous looking knives tucked into those boots, the gun, the _leather_ and the _metal_ and all those _buckles_ and _straps_ … and if she were the practical sort, of course, and not so very attracted to her husband because of rather than despite his military bearing… Well, perhaps she’d be afraid of the man waiting to be told to get out of her kitchen.

She supposes if he were sent for her, perhaps on one of those secret and violent missions, he’d wear a different expression, too. And she would know that she was a target, and it would all be very different indeed.

But he’s not, and he does look painfully uncertain of his welcome. Her mother, her mother’s mother, and every generation all the way up to the beginning of time would have sharp words for her if she let a guest feel unwelcome in her home. And while she does know he’s not a guest so much as a… _an employee_ , she thinks, choosing a word much kinder than the truth her husband had shared, she still has her pride as a hostess.

The rules for the week pass through her mind. She is not to offer him anything, is not to linger in his presence, is not to touch him under any circumstances, and is not to ask him any questions. She’s been briefed. It was exciting, being _briefed_ like that after all the years of silence, even if the instructions had painted a much darker picture than she’d envisioned in the years prior.

Polina would like to do as she was instructed, but if she’s being entirely honest with herself—which she always tries to do—it will be impossible to spend a week in the country with this man and not be in the same general area.

Don’t offer him anything? Don’t linger in his presence? How, pray tell, is she to be a proper hostess if she cannot offer him even so much as a glass of water? If she has to cast him out of a room in order to enter it herself? Or is she to leave a room he is in? Haul herself up out of whatever chair she has sunk into? It’s untenable.

Although she supposes she _could_ go an entire week without asking him a single… No, that’s just not possible, either. And it has nothing to do with being a proper hostess. It’s just that she is curious and is faced with the prospect of getting all of her answers straight from the source. Don’t ask him any questions. Laughable, that.

Her Vovochka should know better. She’ll let him know all about that later tonight. All about how she is going to offer the Soldier things as a hostess should whether he’s officially a person or otherwise, and will not rudely keep herself apart from him, and will end up asking him all about everything, and will…

Well, no. She won’t touch him. That would be rude. He’s delightful enough just to look at, anyway. So delightful.

They may own this man in all the ways that matter, but no one owns her. She’ll do as she pleases, thank you so much. And what pleases her right now, as a mother and a hostess, is to put this Soldier at ease.

Polina smiles warmly, and pulls out the stool tucked under a bit of countertop for times like these when aching feet need a rest, but not so much a rest as to settle on the sofa in the next room and not get up again. She sits. “I’d thought you two wouldn’t arrive until the afternoon. Here I was expecting I’d have time to bake a pie before you got here.”

He processes the words for a moment, clearly assessing her as much as the words she speaks. “We left early, when it was still dark.”

His voice is so much softer than she’d expected—either before her briefing when she’d thought of him as a mysterious and possibly debonair assassin, or after her briefing when she’d learned that he was not so autonomous after all and merely coldly followed orders. The individual words are clear, crisp, not a mumble in the slightest. But the tone is so soft, gentle, like he’s wrapped his voice in a warm flannel.

It’s not the voice of a killer.

She gets the sense that maybe her response to his presence in the kitchen is an unexpected one. Whatever could he have been expecting from her beyond, at worst, a sharp demand that he leave? Well, whatever it was, he’s not getting it. What he’s getting is flour on his hands and maybe some blueberry juice under his fingernails. Her feet hurt, and there’s a pie to be made.

“Well, since you so industriously robbed me of the opportunity to surprise my father-in-law with a pie warm from the oven, you’ll just have to help make one now.” She gestures toward the basket, but does not get up from the stool. “It won’t be a surprise, but it’ll still be a pie.”

Polina watches him for a long moment, waiting for his response to that. And does he ever keep her waiting. His eyes flicker from her, to the basket, back to her, and then to the doorway to the other room, where she can hear a bit of low, murmured conversation, now that it’s been pointed out.

“…What?”

She smiles at him again. Maybe he only ever follows orders because he has been damaged somehow. Maybe he isn’t capable of anything but following orders. Galya’s brother was like that, sometimes, after an accident at the factory. Just didn’t put things together as quick as regular people anymore.

If that’s the case, she will be having a very lengthy chat with her husband about whether it is okay to send people out to do objectionable things simply because those people aren’t able to think clearly enough to object—in short, it’s not. And she would have thought her Vovochka knew that.

“You’re going to bake a pie for me out of those blueberries,” she says. “I’ll direct, and you’ll bake. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you how to do it.”

He blinks at her, very clearly confused about the entirety of the situation. After a moment, he turns his frown toward the door to the other room again, assessing something she can’t begin to guess at, and then back at her, expression bordering on suspicious as he silently mouths the word “bake” to himself, like he thinks she may be laying a trap and that it will not end well for him.

Then, aloud, says again, “What?”

It isn’t the same question as before, though it’s the same word. This seems to be more asking her to confirm her earlier statement, and less a misunderstanding of the statement itself. As though she perhaps hasn’t phrased it correctly or, she thinks darkly, as though he’s used to a request like that being more test than genuine request and is tentatively sending out some feelers to try to get more guidance as to the correct response.

In fairness, she thinks, it’s unlikely he’s been sent out to turn blueberries into blueberry pies as often as he’s been sent out to turn people into dead people. And he’s probably been briefed on her the way she’s been briefed on him—he might expect her to not engage, to not linger, to not make conversation, to not ask questions.

He probably doesn’t know that she is her own woman and will do whatever she pleases. After all, he isn’t his own man. He’s theirs, or near enough.

So she tries to project every ounce of motherly warmth in his direction, to reassure him, to make certain that he knows it’s okay, it’s allowable, it’s a good thing. “I want you to bake a pie for me, um, Soldier—” and what a horrible name that is, couldn’t they have chosen an actual name for him if he didn’t remember the one he was born with? “—while I rest my feet.”

He opens his mouth, possibly to ask her “what” one more time, but then his face, his stance, his whole demeanor undergoes a pronounced transformation. There’s something deep in his eyes that is still very much baffled by the situation and her request, but the rest of his face projects confident agreement.

His shoulders lose their somewhat hounded nervous set and adopt a much more natural position. He stands up straighter, and now he’s much taller than before and is definitely the most muscular man she’s ever laid eyes on. Very fit. The cut of all that leather doesn’t hide a single thing, either. He looks like a sleekly muscled panther in all that black. It’s little wonder she’s been specifically cautioned not to reach out and touch him.

“Understood,” he says, still quiet, but his voice now firm with an undercurrent of determination beneath its downy flannel warmth. He pulls the basket closer, looks inside, studies the berries while his terribly shiny metal arm does something very strange and ripply and makes a faint whir-click sound that he doesn’t seem to notice.

And she was wrong, earlier. Wrong and right. True, he is not the dashing, debonair assassin and mysterious secret agent, but he is also not so damaged that he merely follows orders. This man is definitely capable of much more than that. There’s intelligence written across his face, and if there’s still confusion lurking at the edges, that’s attributable to the newness of the request.

She suspects he’s already got several ideas about what needs to happen here, has embraced this challenge fully, and is dedicated to the outcome in a way that seems perhaps a touch too earnest. She wonders if he approaches every task with this much zeal.

He looks back up at her. Now there’s no confusion left in his eyes. Only patience and willpower. “What’s first?” he asks.

She has no idea how he manages to conduct _any_ secret missions with a voice like that, eyes like those, and a physique as… noticeable… as his. Yes. Noticeable. That’s what she’s going to go with. Certainly not delectable. She’s a blissfully married woman and soon to be mother to her second child. And this man is her beloved husband’s… colleague. Employee.

Look for the positives, she always says. She will not think of him as a hunting dog or a slave, even if that seems to be the truth of it as far as his situation in life goes. He is a soldier, _the_ Soldier, and he works with her husband rather than is owned by her father-in-law. Yes. The positive spin.

If he’s also inordinately attractive, with an undercurrent of appealingly dangerous power, that’s beside the point. She would never touch, even without being explicitly directed to avoid contact. And she doesn’t need to, anyway. There’s quite a lot just to admire from a distance. The shoulders, for one. The angled, flat pane of his torso, for another. The way those pants fit him, for yet another. 

Yes, looking will do _just_ fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who's Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Anna Vladimirovna Karpova, Polina’s (currently) unborn child, referred to by her mother as Anyechka.
> 
> Pavel Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s oldest still-living son; a successful politician with a trend toward scandal and a temper. Also called Pasha, Pashenka, Pashka (rudely). The Soldier mostly thinks of him as the older politician.


	7. First Impressions | Soldat: The wife with the warm disposition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...The creeping expansion of the chapter count begins early in this piece, apparently.

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday around noon, 11 September 1960—**

She is looking at him… oddly. The flushed cheeks make sense since she’s coming in from a morning doing more things than a pregnant woman as big as that should be doing, while her husband had tea with the General. But he can’t quite place the look in her wide eyes, and that is never, never a good thing. If he can’t read the people around him, then he can’t anticipate, can’t plan, can’t move proactively to avoid… any number of things.

He decides to focus on the stick she was using, and the fact that she left it outside. And hasn’t gone back out to fetch it once she realized her kitchen was occupied, and by him. For whatever reason, she doesn’t feel the need to be armed, which he supposes is a good thing, at least for him. Not her wisest move—it is always better to be armed than otherwise—but she _is_ a civilian. So he’ll focus on how it’s a positive sign, maybe a signal of trust in her husband, that he wouldn’t allow a threat inside. It’s something to build on, anyway.

And if he’s wrong, and this is something else, well, he’s already got one reprimand coming to him. If she’s upset, too, maybe they’ll combine things. That happens, sometimes. It’s more convenient that way.

Regardless of the available interpretations for her lack of a big stick or similar clubbing device, her initial obliviousness cannot be read as a good sign. No one who is even tangentially connected to him, the project, or Department X as a whole can afford to be oblivious. He’s not even the only threat on hand. Retaliation against the General’s messages _does_ happen, and operatives should always keep a watch over their shoulders, and over their families.

Maybe this lack of caution and situational awareness is the reason the sweet tooth handler has not brought her on base before. Perhaps her husband is the right amount of protective after all, despite sending her out into the forest alone and ill-equipped. It fits the pattern, anyway. Part capable, part stupid.

“Oh.”

She is obviously still processing her surprise, but her tone isn’t one of shock or dismay, which is bizarre. It’s also not anger, which he adds to the lack of weaponry. The picture he’s compiling is leaning toward “not like the General’s awful wife,” which is both a good thing and too much to be believed. He does not get lucky like that and not just because luck is for people.

There has to be a trap somewhere. Maybe the woman herself is the trap. Somehow.

The woman sends a smile in his direction, something warm and… different. Oddly difficult to interpret, just like the look in her eyes. Probably part of the trap. And then she awkwardly half-leans and half-sits on a sturdy kitchen stool. She’s planning to stay, then. That means… he ought to leave. Even if she doesn’t brandish that stick at him.

He is best kept away from civilians without a handler being in the immediate vicinity, unless those civilians are targets. And the General and his son are close, but not in the kitchen. And she’s not just a civilian, but a handler’s wife. The General’s daughter-in-law. He really needs to leave. This isn’t safe, and she might not know better, but he does.

And he’s about do just that, but instead of waiting for him to leave so that she can carry on doing whatever it is she had planned to do, she opens her mouth and starts speaking. And he can’t just walk away from a handler’s wife mid-sentence. That would be rude.

“I’d thought you two wouldn’t arrive until the afternoon,” she says, her smile carrying over into her voice. “Here I was expecting I’d have time to bake a pie before you got here.”

Leaving aside her borderline improper lumping together of him and the General—“you two,” seriously?—it’s a statement of fact and, as such, wouldn’t ordinarily warrant a response from him. She thought one thing and experienced another. Fact. Her plans have been ruined. Deduction based on that fact. Maybe she’s expecting an apology? She seems to be expecting _something_ , in any case. And not for him to leave. His leaving at this point would also be rude.

Today is a day for running out of time to make wiser decisions, clearly. He should have left when he first thought of doing it. He could be out sanding the front porch or something and not treading near the line of inappropriately lurking where he doesn’t belong.

But trap/test or not, he won’t be rude to a pregnant woman who hasn’t given him a good reason for it. It’s not a politeness thing, he tells himself. Politeness is for people. So it’s not that. It’s just a… a natural, commonsense manner of approaching a handler’s wife. Yes. That. That’s allowed. Maybe even encouraged. Maybe enough of a reason to stay that his not leaving won’t be held against him.

And she’s still waiting. She really does fit into the General’s family. Maybe she has been briefed and is choosing to ignore some of the guidelines. If she hasn’t been briefed at all, that was a stupid oversight on… someone’s part. He’s not going to consider options for _whose_ oversight, because none of the options are people he should be thinking that about. He hopes she’s been briefed.

Anyway, here she sits, smiling patiently at him and waiting for… something. What is the least disappointing thing he can say in response? Her statement of fact seems like it would be best responded to with a similar statement of fact. He can do facts.

“We left early, when it was still dark.” _There you go, pal. …Doll?_ Except why would anyone call a person a doll. It would be demeaning to take away their personhood. They’re not like him. Regardless, she has her response now. He could still be told to get out, and then they would both be able to follow protocol. That’s her best course of action. Whether she’ll do that is still up in the air. She makes questionable decisions, after all.

“Well,” she says, a troubling, energetic light entering her eyes, “since you so industriously robbed me of the opportunity to surprise my father-in-law with a pie warm from the oven, you’ll just have to help make one now.”

That… makes _no_ sense. No one has stolen anything and surprises are never good, anyway, so why would she want to surprise the General? Or even think she could—the General sees _everything_. And he can’t very well leave the room if he has to help her with pie.

But before he can start to pick it apart until it _does_ make sense, she’s waving at the basket and smiling even wider and warmer than before, and leaning ever so slightly forward in a way that has the potential to tip her stool out from under her. That won’t be pretty when it happens. Surely he’d be allowed to catch her, though, if she does slip off. He would do it anyway, but it would be nice if there was no reprimand for the action.

“It won’t be a surprise,” she says, as completely unaware of her risk of falling as she seems to be about the need to maintain distance, “but it’ll still be a pie.”

It sounds like—but could not be the case that—she wants to make food with him still in the kitchen. Specifically, like she wants him to do the making of the food. That isn’t— He doesn’t— His association with food is tenuous at the best of times. He and food do not get along. They are not on speaking terms. Food is for people, not for him, and it reminds him of that every time he has to eat some of it.

He looks from her to the basket. It’s got blueberries in it, as he had suspected from his earlier surveillance through the lace curtains. It also has four different kinds of mushrooms that he can see without moving items around. Are they both becoming pie? The blueberries and the mushrooms? Something about that sounds wrong, though he has no basis for the judgment. Regardless, his opinion is not needed on that count, so he discards the thought.

He looks back at her, at her open and smiling face, at her cheeks that are still as flushed from exertion as when she’d first come inside. At her expectation. What does she want from him? Other than pie and broken protocol. The General would know.

What’s more, the General would know whether he is supposed to agree to her vaguely presuming request, or whether he is supposed to dredge up an excuse to leave the kitchen, put distance between them, put the General’s son at ease. Because he must be distressed. The Soldier is not paying attention to the words the General and his son are exchanging—they still deserve privacy—but the tone indicates agitation.

The General is not, he knows, in his line of sight out the kitchen door. Neither of the men are, nor is the child. He still gives the doorway a hopeful glance before resigning himself to navigating this maybe-test-maybe-trap on his own.

“…What?” _Very articulate, Soldier. Well_ _done_. At least he didn’t swear. 

But she smiles again, wider still. Almost a grin now, though her eyes are worried-not-fearful. She’s upset about something, but not upset at him. And that’s fine. It’s better than fine. He’ll take what he’s given. It’s not often people around him are agitated and he’s _not_ one of the foremost causes of that distress and targets of the resulting stress response.

“You’re going to bake a pie for me out of those blueberries,” she says. And now she’s firm about it, but still warm. Interesting combination. “I’ll direct, and you’ll bake. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you how to do it.”

And that’s a clear order. He should probably say “understood” and get to work. But she’s not a handler in any sense of the title, and her authority is therefore suspect. There are clear protocols about who directs him and when, and those protocols are necessary to avoid confusion and conflict in the field. This is… not the field, however. This is the dacha, and this is a shadow op. And she doesn’t seem to have much regard for protocol, anyway.

And she has ordered him to “bake.”

He’s not sure whether this woman with her warm disposition is to be obeyed to the same degree the General’s spiteful wife is. It would be clearer if he had a specific task he was performing under the General’s direction. Or under his son’s direction. Then he would know to continue performing his task and there would very probably—but not definitely—be no reprimand for his actions.

But there is no task, official or otherwise. And he has finished the task he studiously assigned himself. Since what was meant to be a brief assessment is apparently going to be a lengthy stretch of time, which action, or inaction, is the one that is least likely to end badly?

He needs more information to make a judgment call on that front. At the risk of irritating her, he opts for the usual fallback—repeat the question, weigh the response, assess the shifts of mood and expression, and then estimate the safest course from there.

“What?” he asks. _Still got it, Soldier. Wow._

Her expression darkens a bit, but it still doesn’t seem directed at him. Anger-not-at-him is something he sees from the General fairly often, mostly in response to the actions of other handlers and some of the support teams, particularly the team at the Kursk base. _HYDRA_ , he thinks. Worth the anger, for sure. _Fuck HYDRA_.

Sometimes other people wear the anger-not-at-him expression, though. He mentally adds this woman with her warm disposition to the list. It’s a very short list, even with the addition.

Somehow, impossibly, her demeanor becomes even warmer. Almost inviting, which is never what it seems to be on the surface. Invitations are always a trap waiting to spring shut if he dares to accept them. They just aren’t usually accompanied by… tenderness? There is nothing about him that merits tenderness. He has said exactly ten words to her, none of them worth the breath he took to do it. Why would she display tenderness? Or extend it toward him. Or even be experiencing it in relation to him.

“I want you to bake a pie for me, um, Soldier, while I rest my feet.”

He notes the little verbal stumble over his designation, the flicker of dissatisfaction across her face, and wonders again whether she’s been properly briefed. After studying her for this long, he knows for certain that he has never met her—she has no shape but the one she’s projecting now—and she cannot have seen him while he was in the cold, or she would already know how to interact, would be well-versed in the project protocols. Would probably have shooed him out of the kitchen the moment she saw him.

He supposes it’s possible she could be performing an elaborate setup, that this could be building up toward one of the worse sorts of reprimand and correction as far as those go. That she could be not only mean but fucking cunning about it, like the Lieutenant. Whose traps are premeditated. Drawn out. A steady roll of thunder and always devastating when the lightning finally strikes. It’s just that she… doesn’t seem like the type for that.

Now that he’s met her, he can imagine how she fits together with the sweet tooth handler, can see that she likely means well, just like he does, even if that sometimes means ghastly celebration chocolate. No. He doesn’t think the General’s son—this one, at least—would marry a woman who was mean. A cunning woman, yes, maybe, or even just straightforwardly intelligent. But not a mean one.

It’s likely she hasn’t had an opportunity to fully comprehend any briefing she’s received. She might actually be sincerely experiencing tenderness with him as the focal point, might be unclear on just how close by a handler needs to be. He should clarify things for her, explain what he is, let her know that he is not worth her tenderness. It’s always better when handlers and those adjacent to them are fully aware of the situation. She will need to know for sure how to behave around him, how much distance to keep…

Except…

There is definitely a lack of project awareness that goes into her tenderness, and that should be corrected, but she is just so damn earnest about it. What if it’s rude to correct her assumptions? What if she interprets that as a rejection, when he is in no position to reject anything? What if the parameters of this shadow op are different from usual because of the presence of additional people? Shit, there could whole new protocols he has to learn.

And it’s very possible that this is a result of her being pregnant. Maybe she is suffering from a surplus of maternal energy in preparation for… babies and things. He thinks he might have read somewhere something about pregnancy and brain chemistry and hormones. Or overheard it. That’s logical. And it sounds right, even if it’s a wild-ass guess on his part.

And her feet could absolutely use the rest. What fucking ugly shoes. The least he can do is bake her a damn pie.

She’s said she’d tell him what to do. And that shouldn’t be an issue—he takes direction exceptionally well. It’s one of his few strengths, so he might as well own it. The General agrees, anyway, has praised this quality on multiple occasions. That is reason enough to be confident that he can create a pie when told how to do that.

Fine, then. So that’s his next task, and he will just ask the General about shifted protocols afterward. He is ready enough to comply.

He transitions into a properly receptive mission-ready stance, though he doesn’t give her the response he’d give the General or one of the other handlers. Protocol dictates only handlers are to be told his readiness to comply. A civilian could warrant an “understood,” though, or a nod. She might not know how to read a nod. It’s better to give her a clearer signal than that.

“Understood.” He doesn’t, exactly. But the response isn’t a lie. It conveys what he intends, and as he pulls the basket toward him to see if there is a fifth variety of mushroom for this pie, or perhaps a root vegetable of some sort, he keeps her in his peripheral vision, catches the widening of her eyes, the slight parting of her lips.

Well, maybe she does know some protocol. Perhaps she knows that an “understood” is as good as she’ll get in terms of his announcing his compliance. She seems pleased, anyway. That’s good. He likes pleasing handlers and… some of their wives. He doesn’t so much like pleasing the General’s wife, though he does strive not to piss her off. Safer that way. Even if he’s a colossal failure at achieving that objective. He thinks she brings “pissed off” to the table with her, and it’s probably not up to him whether she serves it fresh or saves it for later.

The Arm decides that thoughts about the General’s wife warrant a recalibration loop, the plates shivering up and then down. He ignores the internal grinding and the audible click at the height of the loop. It’s not ideal, but it doesn’t impair mission-readiness.

They will fix that when it needs to be fixed. He will sit in his chair, and the mechanical technicians will take him apart and put him back together. Solder everything that needs it, and grease up everything that needs that. If it’s a good day, they might even switch off the nerve connections before getting the torch lit up.

They do that sometimes. He hasn’t yet figured out the pattern, the contributing factors, the actions or behaviors on his part that prompt that unnecessary but kind step in the mechanical maintenance process. Someday, maybe he will, and then he can be sure to always do whatever it is that inspires them to switch things off. Someday.

Today, though, he’s on pie detail, apparently. Operation blueberry and mushroom pie, if he’s going to go ahead and name the task. He can think about the Arm and all the pain it’s currently causing later. Or preferably not think about it. Just push it aside, an incidental, unimportant thing, a thing that should not be allowed to distract him from the contents of this basket.

There are just the four varieties of mushroom in the basket, and the berries, and a few leaves that seem to have fallen in by mistake. No root vegetables, or seed pods or anything else. The mushrooms are interesting to look at, at least. He almost reaches in to run a fingertip along the delicate gills under one of the caps, but catches himself. Too much risk of damaging something fragile.

The blueberries the wife with the warm disposition has gathered are smaller than the ones he has seen before at… some… point in time. Whenever. A while ago. It hardly matters and it’s not going to come to him. These berries are darker, too. Still covered with a shimmery gray bloom, though, looking almost velvety soft with it. He refrains from touching these, as well. She will tell him when it’s time for that.

In the meantime, he tries to call to mind any and every example of pie he’s encountered. Bringing his own background material to a situation is sometimes helpful, after all, even in those cases where the only purpose it serves is to be replaced by more relevant intelligence.

He doesn’t think he’s ever heard of a pie made out of fruit, though he has heard of pies made out of meat and vegetables. He can’t quite track down a visual on those, though. Well, that’s not unusual. Pie is not a thing he has needed to concern himself with, obviously.

He decides not to share this thought with the wife with the warm disposition. Something about her indicates she will take it the wrong way, could see an invitation to demonstrate for him what he is sure is a vast array of pies it is possible to create. He would rather focus on the current pie than be briefed on tangentials. Less distracting without the other theoretical pies cluttering things up.

The current pie, it seems, will be one with blueberries and mushrooms. That idea settles finally, becomes concrete after having danced about in abstract form for so long. Blueberries and mushrooms. What. The hell. Or perhaps _why_ the hell. That sounds even more disgusting than some of the other foods he’s encountered, for all that the ingredients are beautiful in their wicker nest. He’s glad he will not have to eat this.

He _hopes_ he will not have to eat it. _Please_ don’t make him eat it.

“What’s first?” he asks.

Hm. Maybe she overworked herself in the forest earlier. She’s even more flushed than before, and staring harder.

Perhaps he should get her a glass of water. Or, perhaps that would be considered presumptuous, overstepping, condescending. But he would get the General a glass of water. Or tea. He would make the General tea. He knows where the little cakes are that would go with it. He put them away earlier. Upper left cupboard, middle shelf, far right, in the back. Next to the chocolate he is hoping no one will feed him.

If he would do it for the General without prompting, it seems acceptable to do it for the wife with the warm disposition. She should not get up for tea. She is very pregnant with horrible shoes. She should stay on her stool. Better, she should sit on the damn thing properly so she won’t slide off onto the floor while his back is turned making pie happen.

He decides that he can make her tea, but that he cannot ask her to sit on the stool differently. The distinction seems like a sound one. The former is something he can provide for her, and the latter is a form of criticism. It is not his place to audibly criticize a handler’s wife. She has perched on that stool before, in all likelihood, and not fallen off it. Surely she can do so now as well.

Just like the General, the sweet tooth handler, and several of the others, the wife with the warm disposition doesn’t remark on the tea preparations, doesn’t ask him what he thinks he’s doing, or tell him to stop, or chide him for the unnecessary action. She doesn’t even seem to mind that he has switched gears from inquiring about the process of pie creation to make her some tea. Almost as though she’s forgotten the mission or been distracted by something else.

She does thank him, though. That’s not unheard of, but it’s rare. She is definitely still learning the project protocols. He’ll have to be careful around her, more so than usual, to be sure he doesn’t misinterpret something if she attempts to follow a protocol and doesn’t quite get it right.

When he’s satisfied she has her tea set up properly—and miraculously, she seems to think that tea warrants a more secure perch on that stool—he returns to his post at the counter near the sink. “I am ready to begin.”

“Oh!” Her eyes take in his posture and then she quickly brings her teacup up to cover her mouth and obscure her cheeks. She clears her throat and blinks a few times, rapidly. “Well,” she finally says, her voice wobbling for some reason, “to start with, we want to get the filling prepped, so it has a long time to get soft in the sugar.”

She looks toward one of the cabinets, the contents of which he knows to be a colander, ceramic bowls in an attractive nested arrangement he approves of very much, something metal and very sharp with holes everywhere that had scraped off stripes of skin when the General’s wife had slapped him across the face with it the last time he was here.

“So pull down the colander from up there, and the bowls, and we’ll get those berries rinsed off.”

Good. Not the face-grating metal contraption. He collects the specified tools and sets them on the counter before pulling the mushrooms out of the basket. They go off to one side for now, and the berries go into the colander. That much is just obvious. He’ll put them under the water, and all the impurities will flow down the drain.

“No, that’s the hot tap, Soldier. You want cold water for the blueberries. We aren’t cooking them yet!” Her laugh is as warm as her disposition. It’s almost unnerving. He thinks he might prefer it if she had a sharper, meaner laugh. Something familiar.

“Yes ma’am.” He switches to the other tap, and looks over his shoulder at her while he works, notes her eyes focused on the knives sheathed at his belt. Maybe he shouldn’t be armed indoors? Is it disturbing her? He could… maybe… take the weaponry off. Put it somewhere else. The shed, maybe. He is still appropriately lethal without them should there be a need to defend the inhabitants of the dacha. He’ll ask the General, after this pie thing. The General will know. “What about for the mushrooms? Hot or cold?”

She brings her eyes up to meet his and stares at him for a moment. It’s not the same stare as before that is hard to read and comes with flushed cheeks and altered breathing patterns. This stare is a mild form of the “what is wrong with you” stare that he gets when he says things that are particularly stupid. He’s glad to see she has that expression in her repertoire. He imagines she will find it useful.

“The mushrooms are for dinner,” she says faintly. “We’re making a _blueberry_ pie.” She shakes her head slightly, just a hint of movement. “No mushrooms.”

He doesn’t know why that revelation is a relief, but it is. He nods and turns back to the sink, pushing the mushrooms further out of the way. “Understood.”

No mushrooms? He is more than ready to comply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter (mostly just by mention): 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.


	8. First Impressions | The General: There was a young handler in Perm...

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday around noon, 11 September 1960—**

The General smooths his grandson’s hair down into a neater arrangement while the boy sleeps on his shoulder. So much rides on this new generation. His Soldier is a weapon that must not fall into the wrong hands, yes. But he’s also owed a measure of loyalty at least equal to what he gives them. The current generation is a failure on that front, and the new one will have to pick up their slack.

At the moment, it seems too big a load for his grandson’s little shoulders, seems too much to expect from a boy just now learning to appreciate the concept of sharing. But he knows that to be a temporary wavering of resolve, if even so strong a thing as that. Vasily cannot perform his role at the tender age of three, and no one expects him to. He’ll have to grow into those responsibilities, the triumphs and tragedies that mark a path in step with his Soldier.

And Vasily _will_ grow into it, just as every handler before him has, including the General himself. No one is born a handler. One works at it, pushes empathy to the side, and does what must be done. It becomes easier with time, though never pleasant, as Vasily will learn.

And perhaps it will come easier to Vasily, with his many years’ head start, than for anyone else who has yet held his Soldier’s leash. He certainly hopes so. There is much to be said for growing up knowing what burdens one is to shoulder in life. And what rewards one can hope to reap. Because being his Soldier’s keeper does have many rewarding moments, if there’s time in the day to experience them.

It’s a thing Vladimir used to acknowledge, those moments of satisfaction, the harsh beauty his Soldier brings to the field with him, death in every line of his form and power in every fluid movement. But also that playful spark in his eyes during a bit of downtime, the childlike wonder he has when faced with almost anything in the natural world—a choice spiderweb, a ladybug, the dim and growing light hitting a blade of grass just so in the early dawn.

And then, of course, Aleksander had to dash all of that with the Cambodia op. He’s given many a test in his years, and very few have failed one of them as catastrophically as Aleksander had failed with Cambodia. Not that Vladimir had done much better. It’s lamentable that his Soldier had to suffer for their failures, though fortuitous enough that those failures came with a new tool for maintaining his Soldier’s programming.

Make what one can of what’s available, after all. He’s never been one to waste raw materials or overlook potential.

If Vladimir can no longer appreciate the depths to his Soldier, no longer has the confidence he used to handle field work with, no longer trusts his Soldier as he should, then the General will simply have to have enough confidence in the plan to balance out Vladimir’s overblown and misplaced caution. If it can be called caution and not outright self-defeating tendencies. His son has an overabundance of it, regardless, and always has.

From the beginning of his tenure in the project, Vladimir has been beset by doubts. In some ways, it’s made him a valuable and skilled handler. He perceives those situations in the field that are likely to set his Soldier off—either in a violent, objective-ruining outburst or in a wonder-fixated daze—where other handlers are oblivious. All that is for the good.

But it can also hold him back, as it’s doing now. His worrying to this extent, despite all evidence leading to success, is a concerning lack of vision. Certainly, things have gone wrong, plans have fallen apart, missions have been failures or, in some cases, dreadful and nightmarish successes. He won’t make the mistake of ignoring the realities—it is not always a series of successes, in the field or otherwise.

But while noticing the dangers and anticipating the potential for disaster is helpful in preventing those disasters from coming to pass, worrying about potential failure has never prevented failure. In most cases, actually, it has prompted the failure. His Soldier is exceedingly sensitive to the anxiety of those around him, and while he sometimes delights in frightening the staff and putting handlers on edge, he only willfully strikes terror in others when he sees an opening. Give him no indication of wariness, and he’ll give no reason to be wary.

And Vladimir seems to have lost his grip on the distinction between cautious examination of the environmental factors on the one hand, and fruitless anxiety about those environmental factors on the other. Are there things that could go catastrophically wrong this week? Absolutely. And before Cambodia, Vladimir would have made note of them and planned out how to counter each one. Now he just fidgets and wrings his hands.

It’ll have to be corrected for. His Soldier respects Vladimir too much to act out toward him, so the low-grade anxiety he presents their Soldier with isn’t immediately rewarded like the self-fulfilling prophecy it is. It’s the reason Vladimir is still a successful field handler despite his failings of the past several years. But he can’t present such a terrible example for his son. Vasily must, if nothing else, grow up without fear of the Soldier he is to keep.

“It’s the story of your life, Vova,” he says, breaking the silence. “Worrying too much.” He shakes his head and rests his hand over his grandson’s head with its downy wisp of hair. “And you know, all that worrying has never gotten you anywhere, other than an aching stomach.”

“Maybe, maybe.” Vladimir hunches his shoulders a little and then straightens them back out. He really must learn to control his mannerisms. After all these years, one would think he’d be less an open book. “But you don’t worry _enough!_ ”

He scoffs, and Vasily shifts sleepily but doesn’t wake. If his son thinks he doesn’t worry, he hasn’t been paying attention. He’s been worried since Prague, though his is at least productive worrying, accompanied by a constant series of actions taken to navigate around the source of the concern. A steady eight years of that wears at a man. It would age a man, too. _Should_ age a man. _Certainly shouldn’t do the opposite_ , he thinks bitterly.

“You can chide me all you want, Father, and you can laugh, too.” Vladimir takes a sip of tea and manages to look miserable while doing it. “But if this week doesn’t set you on edge, then it’s the truth. You _don’t_ worry enough.”

And this is why his Soldier is here, instead of tucked away on base to run drills until Vasily is brought to meet him. It would be the easiest thing for Vladimir to take his son to work for a week. Simple, logical, straightforward, safe. The boy would hardly be the only child on base, though he’d be the first child his Soldier interacted with. He might even make a friend.

But Vladimir is still stuck in that village, can’t actually conceive of their Soldier as anything but what Aleksander is so intent on making him into. And with an entire base full of cowering personnel backing that impression by scurrying away and whispering their relief in the hallways, there will be no opportunity to change that, to bring his son up to speed once more.

Vladimir is immanently predictable, more so on familiar ground. He will balk, and struggle, and resist to the best of his ability, but he’ll be tractable in the end, and will see what he’s meant to see. Will observe their Soldier’s docile nature and come to terms with it. Will re-learn his lamentably lapsed skill set and resume being not just a capable field handler, but the best active field handler.

There won’t be an opportunity to see anything other than a docile and gentle Soldier, if things go to plan. Of those family members gathering for this celebration, only Vera should pose any threat to the peace. Pasha might ordinarily gravitate toward his Soldier as a form of stress relief, but will keep to himself for his reputation’s sake with this many others about. And Aleksander…

He sighs. Aleksander can’t be trusted with another chance during a critical juncture like this one, and as much as he’d like to hope his son’s placement— _not_ exile, despite what he’s claiming—in Nagurskoye will have cooled him off a bit, he is wiser than that. If anything, his son is nursing a grudge up there. But that is a problem for some other week. It can join the rest of the problems currently clamoring for attention and being put off for later.

 _This_ week needs to demonstrate to Vladimir that it’s time he left Cambodia behind. It should work. All but one of the players on the board are predictable to a fault, even—especially—his Soldier. One merely has to know how to read the wide-open book he presents.

His Soldier is only ever unpredictable when he’s been set off center and is trying to stabilize again. He’s had a moment upstairs—obvious enough based the amount of time he spent no doubt agonizing over the precise placement of folders—and is currently putting himself back together by means of cutlery drawer, if the metal clinking is any indication.

And that’s good. His little panic attack upstairs gets that initial uncertainty over with quicker and whatever mess he’s left up there after giving up supplies a legitimate cause for reprimand, should one be needed to further calm him down. He’s hoping there will be no need. He’d like to avoid issuing a reprimand until after there’s been a lengthier introduction made between Soldier and grandson.

The only wild card he’s been dealt in this hand is Polina. But the mother must be involved on the ground level if she is to facilitate any bonding between her son and their Soldier. Bring someone in too late in the game, and they turn resentful. Lesson learned. Vera will never come around. She’s piled too many perceived offenses on his Soldier’s shoulders, and will see none of them removed.

And so Polina will be one to watch this week, and is perhaps the only thing his son should be worrying about. But, well, if anyone can obsessively and pointlessly worry about multiple things at once, it’s his son. He’s no doubt every bit as stressed about his wife as he is about all the rest.

“There is very little about this weekend that should set any of us on edge, Vova.” He reaches for his cup of tea and takes a sip. “At least, any of us thinking logically about the situation.”

“You say that, but this can only go terribly. When was the last time he was even around a child? That little boy in Moscow, maybe?” Vladimir begins systematically cracking his knuckles, one by one, down one hand and then down the other. “Only left alive because of the poetry of blood on the snow, or some such. It would have ruined the composition?”

“As he explained in his mission report,” he says in correction, “the boy in Moscow could not serve as a witness, and therefore did not need to be killed. A notion I adjusted for him, though I doubt the lesson will take this time when it hasn’t before.”

He sets his tea down and leans back in the chair again, shifting his grandson slightly to rest more comfortably against his shoulder. “Is it so terrible that he sees the beauty in what he does?”

Vladimir shifts in his seat. “Terrible? No. Creepy? More than a little, and surprising, too. He can’t remember half the things he’s told, so I’d hardly expect him to compose haiku over the target’s cooling body.”

He chuckles. It had come as a surprise to him, too, that first time. Hearing his Soldier murmur a little verse as they verified mission completion, oblivious to the sound of his own voice and no doubt lost in thoughts. “It’s beautiful poetry, though, when he does share. Perhaps Anastasia will learn a thing or two this weekend.”

His son digs his thumbs into his temples with a low groan. “Don’t encourage that, please. She’ll lose what little temper she has, and then Pasha will go off in her defense, and everything will explode. It’ll be blood everywhere and entrails hanging off the porch railing.”

“There you go worrying again.” Perhaps his son should take up poetry, compose a few limericks in honor of his overactive sense of caution and the imagined disasters he’s so prone to daydreaming up. It could give the paranoia an outlet, and free up his mind for more worthwhile pursuits. There was a young handler in Perm, whose fear made him constantly squirm… Perhaps he’ll ask his Soldier to finish that for him. It can be a reward for lingering in the kitchen long enough to meet Polina.

“I can’t _not_ worry about this, Father. It’s my son. My wife. They are everything to me, and they are in the middle of a war zone without even knowing it.” He turns his teacup around on the table, first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then clockwise again. “He brings war zones with him. He’s walking death, and that’s excellent when we need walking death, and less excellent at my child’s birthday party.”

It’s an effort to keep the exasperation from his voice, but he expends the effort. They have been over this and over it again. “He won’t hurt Polina,” he says. “He won’t hurt Vasily. He won’t hurt anyone.”

“You don’t _know_ that!” Vladimir hisses, at least trying to keep the volume down, even if he can’t keep the tone to a light one. “You’re _guessing_. He is not as predictable as you think he is. Not for anyone who isn’t you. And none of us are you.”

“He’s in there rearranging silverware, Vova. He’s more concerned about whether the forks are all facing the same direction than he is with any sort of violence.” And that is, in and of itself, an excellent sign. Having concluded the two tasks he was given, his Soldier has found another way to be useful rather than interrupt their conversation.

No doubt he’s focusing on _not_ hearing their words. That sort of consideration is common with his Soldier, and unheard of in every other operative at any other level. When faced with an opportunity to soak up possibly useful intelligence, anyone else would be keeping an ear trained on the doorway. His Soldier is deeply curious, but is a combination of too courteous to eavesdrop and too trusting to be suspicious of a conversation that obviously concerns him.

Yet another sign of their Soldier’s compliance and tractability that Vladimir willfully overlooks in favor of recounting those occasional moments of terrified violence that are entirely avoidable if one handles their Soldier properly. The protocols are time-tested and successful. If support teams and handlers would just _adhere_ to them, there would be fewer messes to clean up in military bases across the country.

The kitchen door opens and shuts again, and Vladimir stands up fast enough to nearly topple his chair over.

“Sit. _Down_.”

Vladimir sits, shoulders tense, mouth an anxious line across his face. “If he—”

“Let her have her encounter, Vova, without you hovering about like a nervous hen pecking at anything that looks at her chick sideways. Your anxiety will set him off, and then we _will_ have the problem on our hands that you are so needlessly terrified about. She will be _fine_. You briefed her.” He had _better_ have briefed her. And thoroughly.

This weekend, and indeed the week leading up to it, relies in no small part on the interactions between Polina and his Soldier. If she does nothing to set him off, then the encounter unfolding in the kitchen will form one of the foundation blocks necessary for Vasily to grow into a potential anchor for his Soldier’s loyalty.

No doubt the briefing she received was filled with warnings and pleas to keep her distance, but he will be surprised if she takes any of her husband’s caution to heart if left to her own devices. And it’s imperative that she be herself… though perhaps to a lesser extent than usual. His Soldier will not have the tools necessary to process some of her more exuberant displays of affectionate greeting.

It will be harder for her to approach his Soldier with her typical fearless curiosity if Vladimir is in there wringing his hands and fidgeting. But that fearlessness is crucial. His Soldier will bring more than enough anxiety to the encounter for the both of them, though he’ll hide it well. If they’re both nervous wrecks, then nothing will stick. One or both of them will find the earliest opportunity to flee and the other won’t do anything to stop that.

He needs them to have a chance to interact, regardless of the protocols. It’s possible he’ll need to reprimand his Soldier for the breach of protocol afterward, but that will open a dialogue about what is appropriate and what is not when it comes to this particular handler’s family. And this way there’s a limit to how much time his Soldier can spend tying himself up in knots worrying over an impending introduction.

Sometimes, as counter-intuitive as it seems, it is better to fling his Soldier headlong into a difficult situation with little to no briefing. He’s more resilient than anyone gives him credit for, and not just in the face of medical procedures that would kill any unenhanced human. He has every faith that his Soldier will navigate around Polina whatever she throws at him... just so long as she abides by some of basics.

Gifts are best left to those who understand the most likely interpretations of those gifts. She might mean well, but treating him too kindly is anything but a kindness. Best not to offer him things. He’s incapable of refusing most things, and those he can manage to reject only get rejected with a great deal of inner turmoil, which is a step in the direction of an outburst everyone would prefer to avoid.

It’s often unwise to make too much effort to avoid his Soldier—that’s invariably read as fear and reacted to less than ideally—but it’s equally unwise to seek him out to too great an extent. Very few people are eager to be near him, and those are mostly scientists and researchers he instinctively steers clear of. Corner anything, and it will strike. It takes more to drive his Soldier to that breaking point than most believe, but he’s also prone to more devastating strikes when he does break.

Touch is best left to those qualified to survive it. Support teams go through considerable training to get the right balance of impersonal distance and confident presumption needed to safely handle his Soldier. And they still lose fingers semi-regularly, and occasionally lose much more. To date, only one person in the history of the Winter Soldier project has escaped any hint of reflexive violence. Even Vladimir’s been snapped at once or twice.

The General has confidence that that number can grow, however. That he will be joined by his grandson in this elusive category. But it’s still far safer for physical contact to be limited, at least until his Soldier is properly grounded out here. There’s little sense in tempting fate.

He’s fairly certain Polina can be counted on not to press baked goods on his Soldier or insist that he sleep in a bed or sit down and share dinner. That she will be too busy preparing for the weekend to hound his Soldier or stalk him through the dacha in her need to learn everything that’s been kept from her for years.

And he knows that she will be too embarrassed by her reaction to his Soldier, too mortified by her baser interests, to actually touch him inappropriately. Polina, he has noticed, has a type. His son doesn’t seem to have noticed this yet, can’t see some of the similarities he shares with their Soldier. It’ll be amusing to observe his budding realization of this.

No, where they are likely to run into problems is in the curiosity department. Asking his Soldier question upon question, feeling out the nature of the Winter Soldier project, the nature of codename Winter Soldier himself, all the little things she’s hinted at and been denied knowledge of for the entirety of her relationship with Vladimir.

If his son was smart about briefing her, he’s given her a set of allowable categories, things she can ask him about that aren’t likely to dig anything up that needs to stay buried. If he was foolish, he’s told her not to ask _any_ questions, and she will break within the space of an afternoon and have no guidance as to how to channel her curiosity safely.

They’ll just have to see which it is, and let Polina feel her way into the protocols. No doubt his Soldier will come to him before the day is out, begging to be briefed on the new protocols so that he can learn them and comply properly.

Another positive sign his son will be ignoring. His Soldier is desperate to please. All Vladimir needs to do is give him a means to do that. Give his Soldier an opportunity to comply, and he will leap at it with both hands. And once he’s complied and been found satisfactory, all those on-edge nerves of his can settle.

Handling his Soldier can be the easiest thing in the world if one just takes the time to learn his inner workings. That requires seeing beyond the violence, noticing the innermost bits that want nothing more than to protect, that _need_ to protect something, and giving the man deep inside that programming a chance to satisfy that need.

An entire week in close proximity to his Soldier, when there’s not only a child to be protected but a pregnant woman as well, should give Vladimir the chance he needs to see their Soldier again, at long last, and to put the specter of Cambodia behind him.

He narrows his eyes at his son, who is facing the kitchen and practically vibrating off his chair from the nervous effort to remain seated. Moving beyond Cambodia will take effort on his part. This week will give him the chance, but he’ll need to actually take that chance and put it to use. It might well be that he needs to give his son a shove somewhere along the way.

His Soldier is not the only one who occasionally benefits from being dropped unawares into the fray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Pavel Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s oldest still-living son; a successful politician with a trend toward scandal and a temper. Also called Pasha, Pashenka, Pashka (rudely). The Soldier mostly thinks of him as the older politician. 
> 
> Anastasia Timurovna Karpova, nee Kozlovskaya, Pavel’s wife. Also called Nastya by most and Nastyusha by her husband. Referred to by the Soldier as “the terrible poetess” and similar derisive descriptors.


	9. First Impressions | Soldat: Kitchen tornadoes

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

Maceration is what happens when one puts a basketful of blueberries in a bowl with some sugar, some flour, and the juice of one lemon and then lets that bowl sit off to one side. If the wife with the warm disposition is to be believed—and he sees no reason why she shouldn’t be—this takes the natural tartness of the berries and mellows it out with the sweetness of the sugar, while ensuring a thick filling.

He’ll take her word for it. Pies should apparently be mellow. And thick.

The wife with the warm disposition has had nothing to say on the matter of the lemon juice other than “that is the way my mother does it.” Mothers are experts on the subject of pie. Noted. The wife with the warm disposition is a mother as well. And she knows her way around the blueberry pie creation process. The premise of motherhood conveying pie expertise is relatively sound so far.

He wonders if the General’s spiteful wife is also an expert in pie. On the one hand, she is a mother. On the other… Something tells him the answer is “no” and also that asking about that would earn him something he would rather not receive, possibly another encounter with the grater thing in that cupboard, or maybe the club the General’s wife keeps in one of the drawers, a different one each time, so he can never anticipate what it is she reaches for. A question like that could be considered prying if he asked it of anyone currently present in the dacha. And asking it of the General’s wife herself would be nothing short of idiocy.

He may be a constant failure in many aspects of life, and occasionally very stupid, but he is not that sort of idiot.

The wife with the warm disposition shifts on her stool. “Is it level?”

It is, yes. Perfectly level. He used the stupidly narrow spatula of pointlessness and everything, packed it all in nice and tight, just like the sugar before it that went into the blueberries in their bowl and the saucepan on the stove with the cut up lemon bits. It is a perfect cup of flour. Still, he holds it out for her to inspect.

She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth in a sound of dismay so mild he isn’t sure “dismay” is the right word for it at all. What is milder than dismay? Her tongue click isn’t disappointment, and she doesn’t sound annoyed, though maybe she should be.

“Oh,” she sighs softly.

And maybe it _is_ disappointment, just… not directed at him, somehow. It has the same indirect quality as anger-not-at-him has. But who else would she be disappointed in? It’s just him and her in this kitchen, and she’s hardly done anything to be disappointed about. She’s been very patient. She ought to be pleased with herself.

“I didn’t think about that. I should have said something.”

What should she have said? There was nothing unclear about “measure out one cup of flour for me using the measuring cup in that drawer, the blue one.” That is an instruction even he cannot manage to fail at, surely. He has managed to successfully mix “oh, just a couple spoons, like this” of flour into the berries. Instructions with even more detail than that should not pose any difficulty.

The wife with the warm disposition gives him that weird expression that is smiling from the nose down and frowning from the nose up. She apparently can’t decide which expression applies, and so has chosen both. It is the sort of thing that would create chaos in any situation more tense than operation blueberry pie.

He wishes she would frown at him because he’s clearly made a mistake, or else smile at him because he should be mocked for the mistake, though mocking never seems to have whatever effect on him people are aiming for. He doesn’t know what to do with the half-and-half expression she seems fond of.

She slides off her stool and takes the cup of flour from him. “The sugar we measured earlier should be packed in nice and tight to get the right amount each time. It’s brown sugar, and it’s sticky, so it likes to be squeezed.”

…Sure.

It’s brown. He’ll give it that. But he’s not sure it has the wherewithal to enjoy being squeezed. It is sugar. It’s even less of a person than _he_ is, doesn’t wear a person’s shape or speak like a person or anything. But fine. It likes being squeezed. _Whatever you say, doll._ He’s in no position to argue about the preferences of a measuring cup full of sugar.

She dumps the cup of flour back into the canister he’d scooped it out from. All that packing with the stupidly narrow spatula, wasted. She looks like she’s about to reach across him to get the spatula, but then her cheeks flush an even deeper red than before—almost worryingly dark—and she clears her throat instead, while keeping her hands closer to herself with a tiny puff of exhaled breath.

He hands her the spatula, since she’s obviously hoping to use it. Maybe she just likes pointless things, or maybe there’s a secret value to the runt spatula that he can’t see.

He also goes to the little table she’d been sitting at and tops off her tea before dumping in a half-spoon of jam. She doesn’t take her tea like the General or his son. But now that he has seen her put together a cup, he can comply with her preferences. He sets the cup down on the counter in front of her.

“I…” She clears her throat again and picks up the teacup, takes a drink. “Thank you, um.” She swallows again, almost as though the tea hadn’t all made it down the first time, or some of it had gone down wrong, though he knows it hasn’t. She’d be coughing if it had. Not just swallowing and blinking rapidly.

The Soldier stands at the ready, waiting for her to finish her tea or at least wet her throat enough to avoid needing to clear it constantly. Not everyone handles low-grade dehydration as well as he does, or for as long. They have neither the training nor the composition for it. It’s not their fault.

And she’s pregnant. He thinks it might be bad for the baby if the mother doesn’t have enough to drink. He’s not sure where the notion comes from, but there’s a little wordless impression that the baby will be hungry and thirsty in there, and the mother should eat and drink at least one baby’s worth more than she otherwise would. However much that is. Babies are small. It couldn’t be a lot.

He might ask the General about that, later, if he remembers to do it. He’ll definitely remember to ask about the new set of protocols for time spent at the dacha. That intelligence is mission-critical in a way the ideal eating and drinking habits of pregnant women is not. Still, it would be nice to know. Sometimes his impressions are exactly right, and sometimes they are utterly wrong. The General can always tell him which is which.

“Right,” says the wife with the warm disposition. She has the air of perseverance about her now, as though she is clearing hurdles on a track and has just a few more to go before she wins. Or like she is surveying a mountain she must now climb. She is not wearing long sleeves, but he can see her mentally push up her sleeves. This is a woman who means business now.

“Flour,” she says, “is a very different thing than brown sugar. Flour wants to be daintily measured, lightly, with a gentle touch.”

Except that earlier, he just scooped up a spoonful of it, twice, and dumped that into the berries. And there was nothing dainty or light or gentle about it. Perhaps the flour has changed its mind, since baking ingredients are apparently to be thought of as sentient. He should not be bitter about that. This might be why he’s usually kept away from civilians.

She dips the narrow garbage spatula of pointlessness into the flour canister and lifts out a small amount. Small, because the spatula is a ridiculous waste of space and hasn’t got the surface area needed to pick up a respectable amount of anything, let alone a powder as fine as flour, which keeps avalanching off around the edges instead of staying in a neat peak.

“We just lightly put it in the cup, a little at a time, so that it stays fluffy and we don’t have to sift it afterward if we’re feeling lazy. Except that we’re still going to sift it, because we care about quality.” She scoops another pathetically tiny amount of flour, and then sets the cup down and the spatula beside it. “Now you try. Remember, light, delicate. The flour wants to be weightless in the measuring cup.”

He stares at her. Is this one of the moments of blinding stupidity, wasting all sorts of time and effort because she thinks this flour measuring is complicated business and that the flour has desires? Or is this profound wisdom when it comes to a process that has so many layers of logic behind it that he just can’t see how it works?

Why does he have to do the thing that makes sifting unnecessary when he is still going to have to sift it afterward? Won’t doing it this stupid way have made sifting unnecessary? Is that not the point of doing it the stupid way? Why should he even take into consideration what flour “wants” as though it was a person? Why should _she?_

She fidgets and breathes faster and licks her lips nervously under his stare and he quickly reminds himself not to unnerve her. She is a handler’s wife, and what’s more, she has a warm disposition. And she’s pregnant. He should not stare at her, even in exasperated disbelief or confusion. _Especially_ not in exasperated disbelief. Confusion might be acceptable, but only if she interprets it correctly.

He picks up the cup and the spatula that he hates, and begins dropping minuscule amounts of flour into the cup via spatula. It doesn’t actually matter, of course, whether it’s stupidity or genius or entirely redundant. He has his orders. It is not his place to question them, or her. This is the way she wants it done, so this is the way he is going to do it.

With the idiot spatula. Who needs a bucket to transport water when a spoon will do? Who needs a spatula that is the full width of all the other spatulas in this kitchen, when the runt spatula is right there waiting to be obnoxiously ineffective? Why does it even exist? Who designed this and for what purpose? Tools should be useful, not frustrating.

He is left with a cup that is now full of flour, but that is mounded over the top by quite a lot. His instinct would have been to pat the flour down with the spatula, but in the name of “light and fluffy” he instead uses the spatula to scrape the extra flour off into the canister. There is nothing fluffy about it, but there’s a lot more air in the measuring cup than his last attempt had contained.

The Soldier holds it out to her for inspection and gets a red-cheeked nod before the wife with the warm disposition drains her tea. Well. He doesn’t know the language of her nods yet, or her other mannerisms. But it’s an approving sort of thing, so that’s nice. And not even a reprimand for the earlier attempt.

It occurs to him that she might not know that she has that right. Might not be aware that she has free rein to reprimand him at her discretion. Daringly, he chooses not to inform her about that. He can always pretend that he had thought she already knew. He’s good at pretending some things. As long as it’s not the General who asks. The General can see right through him every time. He usually doesn’t even try to mislead the General.

He looks at the bowl with the berries, steadily filling with juice that wasn’t there before, presumably as the blueberries do what they are supposed to do when macerating. He looks at the other bowls, currently empty. He looks at the counter, with the ornamental square slab of marble. There are options. The Soldier decides not to take them, and instead puts the cup with its flour on the counter, still upright and full.

If it goes into the empty bowls and that’s wrong, then it might lose whatever fluffiness the wife with the warm disposition thinks it should have and he’ll have to fuck around with the garbage spatula again to fix it. If it goes into the berries and that’s wrong, maybe the berries will be ruined by too much flour. He sees no reason to get flour on the marble, even though it’s in a kitchen and could reasonably be expected to get messy.

He’ll just wait for her to tell him where the flour goes. It’s her responsibility during this op. She said she’d tell him what to do. He clearly can’t be trusted to so much as measure flour unsupervised, and so it is up to her to direct him.

“Yes, um, right. You’ll want the sifter. That’s on the shelf just under the colander we used earlier. It’s like a little mill with a crank handle—yes, that.”

There’s clinking at the table behind him as she pours more tea. That’s good. The baby will be thirsty. She should drink tea for it, like watering a garden so the squash will all grow up plump in time for the harvest.

“And then another quarter cup, measured the same way. That one’s red.”

He dumps the cup of flour into the little mill thing—sifter, she said—and scowls briefly as a mist of flour comes right out the bottom and drifts to the floor, much of it gravitating toward him on its way down. This pie business is somehow just as messy as killing people, only in a drier fashion. That doesn’t seem right to him.

The wife with the warm disposition giggles into her teacup, and then waves vaguely. “Oh, put that over the pastry stone, actually. Just set it down. We’ll add the rest of the flour to it, and also the salt and sugar.”

A quick mental review of the kitchen’s inventory reveals exactly one rock, and so he sets the sifter down on the square of marble. Not decorative, then. He’s glad to see it serves a purpose. Things should be useful, ultimately. That said, this flour seems like it will be best put into a bowl, not a flat rock. He does not approve. The flour might “want to be weightless in the measuring cup,” but he thinks it needs some kind of corral to keep it contained.

But it’s not his place to question it. She is a mother, and undoubtedly makes a good many pies on a regular basis. She wouldn’t tell him how best to sharpen a knife, and he won’t tell her all about the impending powdery disaster that is going to happen all over her kitchen with this flour going on a rock and not in a bowl.

He silently inspects the measuring device drawer for a quarter-cup. This drawer still has the tornado quality to it, but he plans to come back inside during the night and fix it while they are all asleep. Perhaps the tornado quality is a contributing factor in her lack of desire to keep flour contained neatly in a bowl. It might not be the kitchen that is disorganized, but the wife with the warm disposition.

Regardless of the drawer’s untidiness, he still approves of the distinction between spoon-spoons and measuring spoons, cup-cups and measuring cups. It’s an orderly sort of thing to do, splitting those apart by purpose, even though she hasn’t been orderly about it. And he can fix that problem later, just like he fixed her silverware.

A quarter cup of flour, scooped with the pointless garbage spatula and leveled off, goes on top of the other in the little sifter, on top of the pie rock he disapproves of.

It isn’t as though his disapproval matters, because his opinions generally don’t. But still. He goes ahead and harbors that little glimmer of disapproval, tucking it deep inside where she won’t see it and possibly feel bad. She doesn’t seem to know as much as she should about their respective positions. She might not know that his opinions are meaningless and should not be permitted to have an impact on her feelings. He can have them, but only if they don’t show.

“And sugar next, but not the brown. You want the granulated. It’s in the—” she stops as he opens the cabinet and withdraws the appropriate canister “—yes, um, right up there. A tablespoon, level, into the flour. It’s metal.”

The Soldier digs for the appropriate measuring device and then holds it up. It is fucking tiny, though it’s the biggest of the measuring spoons. He’s not scooping this shit with the spatula, not for a little spoon like this. She hasn’t told him to, and by now she knows that she will need to tell him whether it has to be squeezed or fluffy. All she said was “level.” That’s easy without the runt spatula. He tosses the sugar on the flour and looks at her expectantly for the next step.

“And now a pinch of salt.”

He blinks. Everything has been precise to this point, with the exception of the “oh, just a couple spoons” of flour earlier. Leveled off, lightly scooped, packed or fluffy. She even picked the lemon out of the group that was the right size for squeezing into the berries. And now she wants “a pinch.” Which is vague enough that he cannot possibly get it right, and is bound to fail when operation blueberry pie clearly requires precision in nearly every element, down to the special rock things have to go on top of.

Her pinch is going to be different from his pinch. His fingers are bigger than hers. Does she want a three-fingered pinch, with thumb, index and middle fingers? Or a two-fingered pinch, with just thumb and index finger? Or is there a measuring device in the drawer with “pinch” written on it? He hadn’t seen one, but he hadn’t been looking for that, he’d been looking for “1 cup” and “1/4 cup” and “tablespoon.”

He could ask her what she means by the words, could elaborate in his question. He’s not actually an idiot with a tiny vocabulary. But while he’s confident in his mastery over his facial expressions, he doesn’t trust his voice to remain neutrally curious in the face of such an obvious setup for failure. He has been reprimanded for tone several times that he can recall, and likely several more that he can’t. Tone is not something he reliably succeeds with.

Her feelings could be hurt if he were to sound exasperated, and she is a person—her feelings matter. He shouldn’t hurt them if there’s a way not to, even if she _is_ laying out a request with vanishingly slim odds of successful completion given the stated parameters. She has done well with the short responses and questions. She’ll know what he means if he’s short about it. She knew what his earlier questions meant, and they were just one word. The same word, even.

So he doesn’t elaborate. Just asks the question. “A pinch,” he says. Well, maybe says the question. Tone isn’t his strong suit, anyway. It’s probably fine. Flat is better than accusatory.

The response is a return of the flushed cheeks—which could not be from exertion at this point, as she’s been idle and indoors for a while now. He isn’t sure why she keeps flushing like that, but she doesn’t seem to be suffering from it. It’s probably not a health issue. If it was, he’s fairly sure her husband would know about it and have a solution. Or the General.

Her flush is accompanied by a fluttering of her arms, gesturing in time to her aborted attempts to explain “pinch.” She’s going to knock her tea right off the table at this rate, and he still won’t know how much salt to add to the flour pile. Worse, she might try to clean it up, and he doubts she should be on the floor mopping up spilled tea when she’s this far along.

He also doubts she can get back up after that, but that’s a rude thought and he pretends he never had it.

He can’t very well tell her to stop flailing about and spluttering—and can’t ask her, either, because it would be presumptuous. So to prevent tea failure without offering her the equivalent of a complaint, he picks up the salt dish and brings it to her. The Soldier holds out the salt so that she can gather up a pinch of it, and his flesh hand, palm up, for her to drop that pinch of salt into. “How much.”

She stares at his hand and giggles, and then holds her hands up against her cheeks for a moment as she bites at her lower lip. She tries very hard to stop giggling, but it’s clearly an uphill battle, and she loses it several times before she finally pinches up some salt and shakily brushes it off into his palm. She uses three fingers. It still isn’t a lot of salt because her hands are tiny. He can measure out a pinch now, if it comes up again. Knowledge acquired.

The salt goes into the flour, and then he follows her mimed instructions to use the sifter. The little device gets held over the pie rock and the handle turns. A cloud of flour drifts down, making just as much of a scattered mess over the marble as it did over his uniform earlier. He still hasn’t seen a pie, but he distinctly disapproves of the process for creating one.

The sifter makes an irritating squeak as its handle turns, and the Arm opts to follow suit with a calibration loop, though at least it doesn’t stick anywhere this time. He should find an opportunity to fully calm down, even if only to avoid setting the Arm off with his agitation. Maybe the General will send him on a perimeter check. He hasn’t done one yet, so he’s blind to the potential dangers.

Maybe there should have been a maintenance session before the shadow op, to repair whatever is failing in the Arm. But that treads just a little too close to second-guessing the General, and he twists his thoughts away from that. If there should have been a maintenance session, there would have been. Since there was not, one was not needed.

Then the mystery of the butter he had cubed earlier and then put in the freezer unused is solved when she has him pull it back out again. After another session of throat-clearing and a sip of tea—and maybe that’s too much tea now, but he really shouldn’t say anything about it; she knows what she’s doing—the wife with the warm disposition straightens up on her stool.

“Now we’re going to bring the pastry together, Soldier. You’re going to, uh, rub—”

She stops to clear her throat, and maybe she can’t have too much tea, or maybe she needs a lozenge instead of tea… there were some in the… he knows he saw some… they were… someone had a throat issue and they were… fuck, why would he not remember this? He remembered where the face-shredder went.

“—to rub… You’re going to— Excuse me, I— I’ll be right back.” And she’s off the stool again and rushing out of the kitchen with more of that tittering giggly laughter, pausing only to babble a soft but rapid-fire “no, no everything’s just fine, I just need to, I’ll be right back, no, don’t get up” as she passes the table where the General sits.

She is definitely the source of the kitchen tornadoes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.


	10. First Impressions | Soldat: To build a pie

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

Without an audience at last, the Soldier slumps against the part of the counter that doesn’t have any stray motes of flour piled on it and brushes at the faint specks of white on his tac gear. This is exhausting, this pie-making, more so than staking out a target in a building or taking out a building full of targets.

And it shouldn’t be. Objectively, he has done nothing. He has rinsed things off, picking out leaves and similar impurities too large to wash down the drain. He has put those things, once rinsed, into bowls with sugar and flour. He has squeezed a lemon and put the fleshy pulp from that and some shavings from its shell—called “zest” for reasons that are ineffable—into a saucepan with yet more sugar and some water to simmer on the stove.

“Zest,” apparently, functions equally well as a noun and as a verb. One “zests” a lemon to obtain its “zest.” The shell of a lemon is not called “zest” until it has been “zested.” Before that, it is just “peel.” But one doesn’t “peel” off strips of “peel;” one “zests” the “peel” and the results of this “zesting” _are_ “zest.” If he were less resilient, he could see himself having an existential vocabulary crisis in this kitchen.

There are so many things he never expected to learn in a kitchen and will never use again in his life. But it had pleased the wife with the warm disposition to yammer on about them, and so he does know these things. He didn’t even have to sit through a session with a bone saw or a butane torch to obtain them. They were just tossed right out there for him to pick up. Totally free of charge. The wife with the warm disposition is a generous soul, if also a fairly chaotic soul.

But beyond rinsing things, mixing things, squeezing things, measuring things and “zesting” things, he has done very little. He supposes he can add making sure sugar is squeezed and flour is fluffy. And maybe it was the flour dust in the air that was making the wife with the warm disposition clear her throat so much toward the end.

In any case, this really, _really_ should not be exhausting. But the feeling is similar to having sprinted one of the training courses for hours on end while new recruits tried to land a hit on him and ultimately learned that they couldn’t keep up with him unless he was drugged to the gills and running on empty.

Maybe it’s that he doesn’t know what the correct protocols are for operation blueberry pie. He always does so much better when he knows what is expected of him, and what he can and should expect from others. It’s logical to be exhausted by the constant need to guess, second-guess and even triple-guess all the possibilities. And this wife with her warm disposition doesn’t seem to adhere to any known protocols.

Is she _allowed_ to just reach into striking distance without doing so expressly to strike him? She is not a handler, with the power to rewrite the rules of his existence if he crosses her. She isn’t a member of one of the support teams, either, expected to be within range and trained to do a job and then move back to safety. And she’s not a trainer or a researcher, permitted to get close but at her own risk.

But she’s done it several times now, and while each time she seemed to get even squirmier immediately afterward, she hasn’t been behaving as though it was improper. Just as though it… he’s not sure. Was exciting? Maybe? But not in a circus performer with a lion sort of way. Not because of the risk. If anything, she didn’t seem to acknowledge the risk.

Which, of course, begs the question… is _he_ allowed to extend a hand toward her? Even handlers prefer it when he doesn’t… Except the General, who trusts him and has nothing to fear from him and every right do as he pleases. And the competent support teams reward that sort of thing with electricity, often before he gets much further than deciding he’s going to try something—that’s what makes them competent: their ability to read him.

But he had held things out to her for inspection, multiple things, multiple times. And he had actually reached for her with the salt, and… and she had giggled. That isn’t the reaction anyone would have if he was breaking protocol. That… isn’t the reaction anyone _has_. Period.

People don’t giggle around him, unless it’s the nervous fear-giggle that sometimes new staff on base suffer from before learning that it’s safer to be silent. But this is definitely not fear on her part. She isn’t afraid at all, of anything, and especially not of him. It’s a novel concept—he can’t recall any other woman who was not fearful in the slightest and who also didn’t despise him and actively seek out chances to hit him.

This woman, with her warm disposition—and her giggles and throat-clearing and flushed cheeks—is not looking for reasons to lash out at him. She’s been given several reasons already, between his ignorance of the process and his failure to anticipate proper methodology, and she has not taken up any of those opportunities. It’s as though she doesn’t _want_ to do that. All she seems to want is a pie that has no mushrooms in it and that he will make for her.

While she giggles, and flushes and squirms around on the stool.

He looks down at the plate of cubed butter in his hand. In the next stage of the pie-building procedure, he’s apparently going to be rubbing something. Possibly this butter. He cannot imagine why that is a necessary step in the process. But he also cannot imagine a pie, except that it seems to be a wrapping of “pastry” around a filling of wet blueberries. The “pastry” will be flour and butter and salt and sugar.

Unless she has more surprises for him. That is more likely than not. She is filled with surprises.

It occurs to him that this happens to be a good chance to divest himself of her last three surprises, actually, so he sets the butter plate down and dips a finger under one of the straps of his tac vest, scooping out the three blueberries he’d deposited there via sleight of hand. She might see them if he puts them in the garbage, and they might clog up the sink if he puts them down there. But they’ll blend right in with the other berries in their increasingly juicy bowl of sugar. He shrugs and drops them in, giving them each a tiny poke—one, two, three—to nudge them under the other blueberries.

That’s one problem solved for the moment. Until the next time. The wife with the warm disposition shares her husband’s proclivity toward wanting to give him food, which is singularly unfortunate.

“Oh, you have to taste your baking while you do it,” she had said, “or it won’t have any heart.” Except there are no hearts in the blueberry pie, just as there are no mushrooms.

“Here, sample the berries,” she had said. “They’re the General’s favorite, you know. Aren’t they just as tart as can be?” Sure, if she says they are. It was nice of her to add a leading follow-up statement like that, telling him the expected response. It was nicer still for her to tell him that the General likes them. _That’s_ information he might be able to use someday. Unlike the many forms of the word “zest.”

“Is the lemon very tart?” she had said. “That tells us how much sugar to add,” she had said. Yes, the lemon was tart. That is the word for something that is sour in a way people find pleasant. But that was much harder to fake than eating the blueberries. He’d had to poke the wet insides of the lemon like she did and then lick his finger the way she licked hers—but minus the giggling—and only _then_ agree with her conclusion that the lemon, indeed, tasted like a lemon.

What. A shock. He could _never_ have expected _that_. But that is an inappropriate amount of derisive sarcasm, for all that it’s internal and not escaping his skull any time soon, so he shoves it off to one side and concentrates instead on the gross lemon taste itself. Lemons, he is permitted to disapprove of. The eccentricities of a handler’s wife, not so much.

So he tasted a lemon. Great. Fine. But that’s where he’s digging his heels in. He’s decided that. She isn’t a handler. She can’t make him. Beyond licking a fucking lemon, he is not going to taste baking while he does it, or after he does it. He doesn’t care what any of it tastes like, and he wouldn’t know from tasting it whether it was good or bad, anyway, so it’s entirely pointless.

Something tells him it will hurt her feelings if he says any of that aloud, though. So it’s been and will likely continue to be a semi-fraught game of smuggling blueberries and whatever else into his tac gear. When in doubt, pretend. Fake it until you don’t have to. Then get rid of the evidence.

It works on her husband and his wretched sticky-centered chocolates, too, sometimes. Not always. Sometimes he has to chew them up—chew them _forever_ —and then swallow them so that they stay down, which is usually a miserable losing battle made worse by the motion of whatever transport vehicle they find themselves in when it’s time for celebratory chocolate hell.

Operation blueberry pie, despite the lemon, isn’t anywhere near that level of awful, though it’s still illogically organized in ways that clearly mimic the scattered thinking the wife with the warm disposition seems to be prone to. Case in point, cold butter. And the cup with the ice water. Why?

He hesitates, and then cautiously rubs a metal fingertip lightly back and forth along one of the butter cubes. Huh. It’s cold, as it should be out of the freezer, but that doesn’t give him any insight where rubbing is concerned.

Butter is butter, no matter how cold it is. It can’t be rubbed onto flour, because the flour is a powder and would not stay still to be rubbed against, even if it was in a bowl, like it should be. It can’t be rubbed into the blueberries, because they are round, and would move out of the way if rubbed against. It could be rubbed into the lemon and sugar mixture on the stove, but then the temperatures don’t line up. Why should the butter have to be extremely cold if it was just going to be added to hot lemon stuff?

It could logically be rubbed against the pie plate…

“Now, where were we?”

The wife with the warm disposition comes waddling—gliding unsteadily—into the room, and takes up her perch on the stool. Her hair is wet around the edges of her face, and there are a few wet spots on her dress where droplets of water must have fallen. She’s also barefoot, so she has some capacity to make good decisions where shoes are concerned.

Regardless, apparently washing her face has put her into a more serious frame of mind for operation blueberry pie. The flushed cheeks are back to a healthy color again. That’s good. He was starting to worry about her well-being.

He holds up the plate of butter. “I’m going to rub something, maybe with butter?” That is exactly where they left off. _Very accurate. Good job, Soldier._ It’s maybe even a little further than where they left off. He’s offering her a guess, something she can strike down or praise, her choice. Or even ignore.

She licks her lips, instead, and eyes the ceiling as though steeling herself for an arduous task. Her cheeks are starting to get pink again, too. Maybe she should wash her face a second time. The effects were temporary at best, but more successful than the tea while they lasted. Her cheeks hadn’t even been slightly pink when she came back.

“You are going to… rub…”

And she is choosing every word almost as carefully as he does, so he pays _very_ close attention—it’s obviously important. _Critically_ important. Vital to the success of the operation.

“The butter… against…” She breathes out, struggles not to smile, smooths her dress over her belly. “ _Into_ the flour.” And her cheeks darken from pink to red.

Maybe this is just a thing that happens when she speaks, a mannerism that is part of her shape the way the General is always straightening the lapels on his coat, even when they’re already straight. Or maybe it’s her warm disposition. Maybe all the heat has to go somewhere, and her cheeks are just a good outlet for it. Maybe that’s why she needed the butter to be even colder than the refrigerator could make it.

However and why-ever that’s the case, at least he now has… Well, no. He doesn’t have clear direction. He can imagine putting the butter cubes in the flour and rubbing things around, but that’s just going to result in flour-coated butter cubes. And that doesn’t seem like it would be worth all this careful measuring of flour—there would be loads of it left over, all fluffy and forlorn on its pointless pie rock.

“Rub” is bound to be shorthand for a special technique that is more forceful than his typical interpretation for that word. But he can’t see it being just a case of smashing things together. There has been considerable care taken in all parts of this. So there must be a considerably careful technique to it, given all the other techniques that have gone into this operation so far. And he’s sure he’ll get it wrong if he just takes a wild guess.

If he were to mix flour and butter together on his own terms, not only would he do it in a fucking bowl and not on a goddamn rock, he would melt the butter first. Seems like it would be easier. But this is very specifically cold butter, kept cold, on purpose.

Well, the General never finds fault with him when he’s honest about confusion, though he is sometimes irritated when he makes an incorrect assumption despite having the opportunity to request clarification. It’s the same with the sweet tooth handler and most of the others.

The Lieutenant _does_ find fault—either way, whether he asks or guesses—but he’s looking for failure and leaping at any sign of it. The wife with the warm disposition is about as far from the Lieutenant as it would be possible for a person to get. She will probably not be upset with him for this admission.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t…” She frowns and then brightens up again. “Oh! Yes, terminology again. That could be confusing. Um.” She looks like she’s about to get off the stool and come to the counter to show him what she means, but then apparently thinks better of it.

And that’s wise—she should keep what distance she can, even if she has to be in the kitchen to supervise the process and issue commands. At least until he can learn the new protocols. Just long enough, maybe, for him to have a chance of successfully adhering to them.

The wife with the warm disposition shifts about on her stool for a moment, and then holds her hands out, fingers pointing down. “You’ll put the butter in the middle of the flour, and then… mash it all together with your fingers.”

Seriously? It really _is_ just smashing all this shit together on a rock? _That_ is the special pie technique? What happened to the flour being a delicate princess that needed to be fucking coddled so she could remain fluffy and weightless? He spent all that time fucking around with the garbage spatula just so that he could smash a bunch of ice-cold butter into the middle of the pile? He _sifted_ that shit! What was the _point?!_

She makes little circles with her thumbs against the pads of her fingertips. “But gently, like you’re pinching something soft and delicate and—” She chokes a little on the words and clears her throat, and the rest comes out as a squeak. “—and r-rolling… s-something between your fingertips.”

And now she is the brightest red she has been all day, and she will draw blood if she doesn’t stop biting her lip. This is really untenable, and could not possibly be healthy. She puts her hands up to her cheeks again, possibly to hide them as she had with a teacup earlier, or possibly to try cooling them off.

But there are better ways to cool down. Far more effective ways. If she hasn’t got any common sense—which he really is starting to think is the case, what with all this totally and completely pointless over-preparation of ingredients—he’ll just have to have it for her.

He sets the plate of butter down and takes the top washcloth from the stack in the basket by the sink. It goes under the cold tap, and he wets it thoroughly before wringing it out just enough that it won’t drip when pressed against her skin. Still plenty of water for keeping cool.

“Here.” He holds out the cloth for her to take, and is left holding it for almost a solid minute while she stares at it, or maybe through it. Maybe she needs verbal confirmation of his reasoning before she can accept the assistance. Handlers sometimes make him show his work, too. And trainers. That’s fine. “You seem to be overheating.”

“…is that so?” she says faintly, still not lowering her hands from her cheeks to take the cloth.

Yes. He just said exactly that. But the General is sometimes irritated when he repeats himself, so he doesn’t do it now. He’ll have to say something else instead, something that will prompt her to take the cloth from him. “A cold rag might help with that.”

“…yes…” She reaches out and takes the cloth, bringing it up to one cheek and then the other, and then the back of her neck. Well, at least she knows what to do with it once she’s decided to accept it.

“Thank you,” she says softly, with a hint of surprise that prompts a highly inappropriate semi-disgruntled flicker in the back of his mind—why would it be surprising that he is monitoring her well-being and would seek to assist her? She’s a handler’s wife, for fuck’s sake. Her comfort and well-being is a priority, regardless of the illogical and unnecessary additional steps she has dragged him through during this pie-making endeavor. “That’s very thoughtful, Soldier.”

Again with the surprise. He’s not sure whether he should feel insulted by that. Well, no. He knows full well that it’s not his place to feel insulted, that it’s a failing on his part. He decides to just be pleased she’s finally doing something that might help treat the issue she’s having with her cheeks. And so what if she is surprised by his attention to detail and situational awareness. She’s hardly the first person to assume his occasional mindless moments are the norm, that what can be seen on the outside is all that is going on on the inside.

“I’ll squish the butter and flour together while you cool down,” he says flatly, carefully keeping his expression as moderated as he can to avoid letting her see even a hint of irritation. It would not do to let irritation show. Not only might it hurt her feelings, but it is absolutely outside of protocol to act like he has any right to be irritated by a handler. Or, apparently, their wives. So he will just have to turn his back to her and squish things.

And it _is_ squishy, the butter and flour. Very squishy. Unpleasantly squishy, though he isn’t going to complain about that in any audible fashion. The flour slowly goes from a powdery mess to a sticky mess to a greasy mess, and every single one of those stages crumbly and clumpy and clingy and gross.

He registers her mumbling something about bringing it together with water and scraping things up off the rock with—of fucking course—the runt spatula. He’s never going to be free of that fucking thing. And since the pie rock is a flat piece of garbage marble, naturally the ice water tries to run right off it onto the counter, no matter how slowly he pours it, and there’s butter and flour and shit everywhere, all over everything.

Still. He grits his teeth and does his best. It’s all he _can_ do, really. Uses the idiot spatula to try to sweep water back into the soggy fucking mess in the middle of the rock. Mashes the soggy fucking mess into a soggier fucking mess.

Despite his resolve not to voice any of his many complaints about this part of operation blueberry pie, it seems the Arm is going to do his complaining for him, and it gets started on that task pretty damn quick once the water gets added, with a doubled calibration loop that sticks both times. He gets floury butter—or maybe buttery flour?—under the plate on his bicep straightening that out. Spectacular. Not just the hand.

Who knew pie was such a disgusting mess? Though he supposes it wouldn’t be quite this disgusting or this messy for a person with two flesh hands. There wouldn’t be the unsettling internal squish of foreign material embedded in his fingers and palm, obviously. There also would probably not be any flickering mental images of other foreign material getting in between plates and gunking things up.

Material just as squishy and sometimes just as greasy, but made out of humans instead of food.

He adds that to the pile of things he is specifically not mentioning to the wife with the warm disposition. She seems very enthusiastic about pie in general and this pie in specific. He would hate to ruin that for her, even if her enthusiasm is clearly misguided on every single level. Even if it runs out of levels on which to be misguided and makes new ones up at every turn.

Eventually he has something that isn’t so crumbly, but is greasy as hell. At least the water is all inside of it, now, even if a good chunk of “it” is inside his fucking hand. He has to grudgingly admit that the garbage spatula is actually decent—not good, just decent—at getting all the mushy flour mess off the rock and into something like a big clump in the middle.

It’s a lot less good at getting mushy flour mess off his metal hand. The edge of the spatula just catches in the inter-plate ridges and sets his teeth on edge with the grating friction of metal on metal that travels up the Arm like climbing a ladder with a shiver of Wrong. But when he gives up on that and tries wiping it off with his flesh hand, he just ends up smushing things further inside.

He wonders whether all the painstaking measurements took into account the way some of the “pastry”—because this shit has become something else altogether, and he suspects that something to be “pastry”—is lost under fingernails and in the plates of his metal hand. He doubts it, and hopes there will still be enough of it left by the end to complete the operation and achieve the mission objective.

…And that the “pastry” maybe won’t have an opportunity to dry up inside his hand, because that’s going to be hell and half getting out without a technician to open things up and do the honors with a bottle of degreasing solvent and a full set of metal picks.

There is nothing redeeming about pie, he decides darkly. Everything about pie is horrible. He should have left this fucking kitchen when he had the chance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.


	11. First Impressions | Polina: Never, never, never

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delays here, folks. A bit of unexpected travel threw me off a bit.

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

Polina smiles brightly at her father-in-law as she returns from the bathroom, hoping he doesn’t see too much of her inner turmoil, though if she’s being honest with herself, she knows that he probably marked down every traitorous giggle in a mental ledger, complete with timestamp. He doesn’t seem upset by anything, though, which is all she ever bothers to aim for in terms of pleasing her in-laws.

She suspects the General himself is fond of her, somewhat, as fond as he is of anyone who isn’t his son or grandchild, but her mother-in-law… Well, stereotypes come from somewhere. A wife is meant to be displeasing to her husband’s mother. That’s just the natural order of things. In-laws are meant to be antagonistic.

And if her parents both take that a step or five further than is strictly necessary and hate her darling husband enough to bow out of her life entirely—the positive spin, Polina, look for the positive spin—then that’s just more time she gets to spend with her new family. She has an alarming number of brothers-in-law, but a few of them do come with sisters-in-law that are often wonderful to spend time with.

And really, she’d never even liked that banker’s boy her parents were so invested in. He’d never have managed to get up to her window over her family’s clothier shop, either—he had neither the guts nor the muscles for it, and wasn’t that just a deal-breaker in _anyone’s_ book? Why settle for a meek little banker’s boy when there was a strapping young military man in town who could shimmy up that wall like a spider and lick chocolate from her fingers—and other places—at half past midnight?

Anyway, her father-in-law merely gives her a semi-fond nod, and certainly anyone would forgive her for possibly making up a portion of that fondness. She can never tell with him, but a woman can dream of approval from her in-laws when her own parents have turned their backs. And at least some of his fondness is genuine and not imagined on her part. She’s sure of that. Mostly sure, anyway.

Regardless, he isn’t upset, and that’s the important thing. And if her Vovochka _does_ seem upset, well, he’s been nervous about this whole week since he learned about it, so that’s not new. He just needs a little reassurance. She has long since settled into that role, with relish.

Polina pauses behind him to run her hands from the tops his shoulders down his chest—mm, contours, so well-built, her Vovochka—and then leans forward over his shoulder to kiss him soundly before straightening back up and slipping into her kitchen with a little smile. Reassurance accomplished, surely.

“Now, where were we?”

She’s confident that she can do this. It cannot possibly be too difficult for her to manage to bake a pie with this man, this _Soldier_ , in her kitchen. She has baked more pies in this year so far than she has years to her name. It is just a pie. She simply has to keep her head about her now that she’s scraped her wits up off the bathroom floor and put them back in working order.

She reclaims her seat and smiles at him. Her eyes do _not_ travel inappropriately down his torso and legs—they _don’t!_ —but she can see that he has taken the opportunity to brush some of the flour off his magnificent body.

 _No, Polinka_ , she scolds herself with a mental shake, _we’re not doing that._ Oh, if only she could slap herself right across the brain, just to knock some decency into herself. Maybe she should have kept her shoes on to give herself a distraction from the, well, _distraction_ , in her kitchen.

The Soldier gestures with the butter, one of the minimal movements she’s coming to expect from him, just enough effort expended to complete the motion, all the rest of his movements held tightly in check, all coiled up and full of explosive potential. It should not look so powerful for a man to move like that, but _oh_ … it _does_.

“I’m going to rub something, maybe with butter?”

Oh, god. He should not be allowed to _say_ things like that with those lips and that voice and all of the rest of him, while holding icy cold chunks of butter that he could absolutely rub all over her b— No! No, she’s not going to think these things. She is better than this.

She can feel her cheeks getting warm again, and right after a cold rag in the bathroom no less, and she drags her eyes away from the Adonis in black leather to look at the ceiling instead. The ceiling is very safe. The ceiling is not a chiseled ode to mankind in tight-laced combat boots with the gentlest look of confusion she’s ever seen, like a— Like a baby deer in the field.

A poor little lost fawn, dappled with flour all over his tight pants and strappy leather tac vest—the strappy leather tac vest he _kills_ people in, and what is wrong with her that this only improves the view from here?

“You are going to…” _Come on then, Polya, you can do this._ She only has to tell him how to properly incorporate butter and flour into a pastry. There is nothing distracting about that. It’s a— A perfectly normal thing to do in a kitchen, even if there is a—

“Rub…” _That’s it, just a few more words. This is_ pie _, not love-making._ There is nothing sensual about pastry. Not until it’s baked and can be ferried to a waiting mouth and popped, all flaky and light, between eager lips—

“The butter…” _Yes. Go on, Polina. Ignore the way he leans forward and studies you all intensely._ Oh, he is _not_ helping. He’s a _menace_. A menace wrapped up in leather and buckles and bristling with combat daggers that could eviscerate an enemy or a target or a—

“Against…” _No,_ no! _Not against, that’s the wrong word, Polinka, you ninny!_ Sure, it might very well be a word that she would like very much to be applicable here, rubbing against, rubbing butter against, rubbing _anything_ against—

But she is better than this, and her beloved husband is just in the next room besides. If she’s going to rub against anyone, it’ll be him. And that thought does not help, either; it’s just more of the same, but properly directed. Why did she feel him up on her way to this kitchen that’s filled with this muscular tower of _man_ in front of her and off limits in every way?

Polina feels her lips twitch into an embarrassed smile despite all her efforts to the contrary, and wonders what the Soldier thinks of her, sitting here so bothered by a plate of butter. She gathers herself, smooths her dress, reminds herself that she is an expectant mother and is therefore meant to be a serene and composed presence, all motherly and nurturing… And tries again.

“ _Into_ the flour.” Yes. Like that. _Into_ the flour. That wasn’t so hard. The butter gets rubbed _into_ the flour. There are other things that could be rubbed into other places, and that might be very fun and distracting, but they are _baking_ , she and the Soldier, and this is just butter and flour, and salt and sugar, and a bit of water, and an oven, and…

There is a pause, and she would look at him to see what that pause is all about—whether it’s the disdain she rightly deserves for her behavior at long last, or the concern he seems to be overcome with regularly, or maybe just more of the painfully honest confusion he sometimes displays—but she doesn’t quite trust herself not to be rude if she lets her eyes linger directly on him.

“I don’t understand.”

Confusion, then. His voice is so soft. She doesn’t think she will ever get used to it, or get tired of it, or stop being moved by it. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t speak much. If he went on for long stretches, spoke at length about literally _anything_ , she doesn’t know what would happen. Something horrible and unrestrained, probably. Something she would regret, certainly.

“You don’t…” She frowns. Well, you just get your fingers in there and— Oh, but of course he doesn’t make pastry, he makes other things. Dead people, for instance. It’s not just the recipe but all the elements that are new. “Oh! Yes, terminology again. That could be confusing. Um.”

What would be easiest and most expedient would be her showing him how to be gentle with the butter, to work it in lightly enough to keep it from melting, to keep it cold. But that would put her side by side with him, and she doesn’t know if she can survive another spatula incident without combusting. Or worse—leaning against that thick leather-bound chest of his.

She remains seated. Discretion is the better part of valor. If she’s not in range to be wrapped up in those arms and held close, then she might not think about it too heavily. It hasn’t seemed to work that way so far, but a woman can hope.

Since she won’t be standing by his side working her fingers in the butter and flour, and close enough to smell that leather, she will just sit here and mime it. “You’ll put the butter in the middle of the flour, and then mash it all together with your fingers.”

It isn’t until she is in the middle of the demonstration, making little circular pinches in the air between them, that she realizes her mistake. And by then, it is too late. She is already speaking. “But gently,” she hears herself saying, “like you’re pinching something soft and delicate and—”

 _Oh, Polinka, what have you_ done? _What are you_ saying _, you silly goose?_ She manages to clear her throat, but the words continue tumbling out afterward, in an embarrassed little squeak. “—and r-rolling…” Don’t say nipples. _Don’t_ say nipples! “S-something between your fingertips.”

Oh. _Oh_ , and the very earth itself can just go ahead and swallow her up right this very minute, thank you _so_ much. Making pie with this man was a terrible idea! Why would she ever have thought this is was a good thing to be doing? Didn’t she learn from her very own Vovochka that baking together was a surefire way to find herself feeding bits of chocolate to a fine, uniformed, hunk of a military man in a pair of boots that were welcome to step all over her any day?

Except that they _wouldn’t_ step on her, of course. Because Vladimir might be confident and dangerous and wearing _those clothes_ , right out of the _field_ , sometimes with gunpowder or blood still on them in such enticing patterns, but she could tame him with the perfect morsel of chocolate-dipped toffee and he’d take those boots off before climbing up into her bed with her perfectly laundered sheets—except…

Except those times when he _wouldn’t_  take them off, those times when they only had a feverishly intense spare moment or two because her parents were just downstairs with the customers, and he’d have to slip back out the window when there were footsteps on the stairs, before her father could fling the door open to investigate the sounds she had made even though she was trying to be quiet about it, was biting her pillow or his uniform-clad shoulder or…

And those times, when they were so furtive but so lost in each other, and he had to make his escape, so daringly and with such swift, powerful movements, there would sometimes be a bootprint left behind in his hurry to preserve her reputation—though, _oh_ , not her virtue—and ah, the thrill of nearly being discovered together, and the danger that her father could learn who had been with her just moments before, and what they’d been _doing_ , and…

“Here.”

She comes back into the room—not her bedroom in her parents’ home above the shop when she was being so clandestinely courted by her dashing husband despite her parents’ wishes and plans for her and the banker’s son, but the kitchen of her husband’s father’s dacha—to find her hands on her cheeks and a damp cloth being held out in front of her by a strong arm clad in black leather.

Well, she supposes with a furious and mortified blush, there are worse places her hands could have drifted to.

Her Vovochka will have his work cut out for him this evening if this continues, if she even makes it that long. Not that either of them will mind. She doesn’t remember being quite this needy for his touch with her last pregnancy. Needy, certainly. Almost voracious. But not quite so prone to… well, this level of distracted daydreaming.

But last time she hadn’t been confronted with a kitchen full of masculine perfection complete with stunning eyes filled with tender concern, powerful limbs as graceful as a prowling leopard’s, and long brown hair that her fingers would gladly dance through despite it not being anything close to in fashion.

Except that she would never. Never, never, never. Whatever is _wrong_ with her?

“You seem to be overheating.”

Is… Is _that_ what he thinks this is? Overheating? That’s… the best possible interpretation he could have for her behavior, where her dignity is concerned. Also painfully naive. His experiences must be so limited for him not to even register unveiled lust when it’s directed straight at him. It isn’t right. That he’s so very excluded from the basics of human experience…

And also that she is reacting to him in this manner. Almost like _she’s_ the predator between the two of them—the prowling leopard to his fawn in the grass.

“…is that so?” she manages after a moment.

She’d like to reach out and take that cloth, but her hands don’t want to leave the safety of her burning cheeks. What if her fingers brush his? Will she catch on fire? She just well might. Or worse, she might thread her fingers through his and _hold_ that hand with the cloth in it. Oh, she’s offered him blueberries, and lingered in his presence and come terribly close to asking him meaningful questions… but she hasn’t touched him. She won’t. It isn’t right. She’s not a predator. Though she _is_ staring.

But he doesn’t seem to mind her not accepting the cloth, doesn’t seem to object to her keeping him waiting. His eyes do the thing she’s seen them do whenever she asks him something, where he looks ever-so-slightly _through_ her, as though going down a mental list of options—and isn’t that another thing to feel _upset_ about, that he treads so carefully when there is no need for it—and then he unleashes that _voice_ on her again.

“A cold rag might help with that.”

She’d thought so, too, in the bathroom earlier. And it had, for a moment. Then she’d groped her husband and put herself back in the kitchen, and he’d talked about rubbing butter against her bo— Or no, she’d added that, he had merely—

“Yes,” she agrees, shaking her thoughts away if she’s to have any chance at all of surviving the afternoon without self-immolating. Yes, a cold rag will be very good to have. She delicately plucks it from his hand, taking exceptional care not to touch him, and uses it to put out the fire in her cheeks. “Thank you. That’s… very thoughtful, Soldier.”

It _is_ thoughtful. Far more so than a heartless killer would be capable of, let alone an obedient shell of a man. Yet another strike against this notion that the Soldier is lesser somehow, is an _owned thing_. He has taken great care with all of his words and actions, has plied her with more tea than most men would think to offer, and always when she is blushing the hardest, she realizes.

Such naive concern, and so very much of it. And here she is taking advantage of that. Even though she would never have flung herself at him before, it’s simply unconscionable now. She regrets even looking the way she has been, though she doesn’t see herself obtaining any extra self-control in the near future, more’s the pity.

Polina doesn’t catch what it is that flickers through his eyes for the merest flash, but she catches that something does. It’s there and gone before she has a chance to do more than detect its afterimage. She’s only known him for a very short while, but she has learned that his raw physical power is not the only thing being held tightly reined in.

Here is, perhaps, yet another of those extensive internal reactions that are buried unseen. Perhaps when he knows her better, he will share them. She isn’t sure at the moment whether that would be an honor or an unintended trap. She would love to know his mind, to peel back layers of self-control and discover the truth of him, of his thoughts and feelings and motivations. But who is to say what she might find underneath all the caution and care?

And is it even right for her to undertake such a search for the man inside that leather-swathed mystery? Of course she has learned the many facets of her husband over the years they’ve loved each other. But what right does she have to peek inside another, even if he is so very hidden in plain sight?

“I’ll squish the butter and flour together while you cool down,” he says, voice maybe even softer than before, which she had not thought possible.

How softly can he speak before he’s so soft she can’t hear him at all? Except that even soft, his voice somehow _carries_ , gets right down inside her, and his enunciation is crisp and clear. She is so, so very glad he didn’t use her terminology. She doesn’t know if she can handle him saying “rub” another time, even while she’s beating herself up for having such incredibly rude thoughts.

She thinks back, and realizes that it’s the first time he’s announced his task before performing it. Everything else he does is so deliberate, so this must be, too, but she can’t think of what meaning might be lurking behind this latest quirk.

At least his back is to her again, so she can ponder these things without his eyes on her. There’s something about his paying attention to her that would be unnerving if he wasn’t also so gentle and careful, a perfect balance for the coiled spring quality of motion held tightly in check.

She can’t see his technique—which is for the best, no doubt; actually observing his fingers at work would not help her “cool down”—but she can hear his metal fingers lightly scrape each other. And she can see his shoulder blades moving under those leather straps, shifting about in ways that make her swallow, hard.

She should pour more tea so she has something to swallow besides just her tongue. She is absolutely not salivating. Polina pours a cup, and takes care not to choke on it before telling him about dribbling the water in until it comes together, and scraping the stone to help combine things. She doesn’t think about what water dribbling along his skin would look like. Not even a little bit. Not even a drop.

Why, she doesn’t even know what his skin would look like, other than his face and the hand currently doing _things_ to that pastry that she wouldn’t mind having done to her. She knows what his leather looks like, though. She can imagine rivulets of water trickling down his back, his chest, that torso, the muscles of his abdomen, maybe even his hips, or his thighs, or—

Maybe the water is dripping from hair that’s wet with rain, or maybe he’s just surfaced from a pond deep in enemy territory, where he was setting up waterproof explosives to blow open an underwater bunker, and all that hair is clinging to his face, and he reaches up and…

It is with a great deal of willpower that her eyes remain on his back and shoulders, and not on his… other areas. She would like to think that the utterly brutal-looking knife sheathed horizontally at the small of his back is a warning that prompts her eyes to dart back upward to a more appropriate view, but…

Really, his backside might be a marvel of human anatomy, but that wicked dagger of his is every bit as appealing. She can just imagine him reaching back to withdraw it, perhaps advancing on some hapless enemy in the field, or perhaps prying open a control panel to force his way into a bunker full of hostiles, or perhaps to trim his fingernails—

Mmm, it’s always such a thrill to watch a man use a deadly weapon to engage in self-care. Her Vovochka once trimmed _her_ fingernails with his field knife, fresh from being sharpened, and it had taken all of her reserves not to pounce on him before he finished. She’d pounced plenty hard just afterward, and then later had to stitch up the upholstery from when that knife slipped forgotten from his hand.

She had asked him once whether he shaved with it out in the field, on his ops and his missions, and he’d laughed. Apparently keeping a knife sharp enough for that is impractical. She’d still indulged in many nights’ worth of fantasy about him doing just that, even though it would be unlikely to ever come to pass. Imagination is _meant_ to fill the gaps between what is and what could be, after all.

And she has plenty to imagine, plenty of could-be activities, since he so very rarely has those longer missions anymore. Not for years, not since… Well. Not for quite a while. Maybe two or three a year, less than half what he used to do, and all the rest local, short, just a few days away at a time. She likes to think it’s a need to be near her and their precious Vasyenka, and sometimes she believes that.

She also thinks that it is lovely having him around so much more, so nice that she no longer has to last entire weeks at a time without him—or a whole month, even, on occasion—and sometimes she is able to stop there, and not worry about the reasons for it all. But only sometimes.

Other times, she knows that his missions weigh heavily on him, that he needs a respite, something to come home to. And she might delight in being that refuge and hauling him in from the storm of his inner turmoil, but oh how much she wishes he didn’t need the shelter.

A faint whir-click pulls her back to the kitchen, and she blinks, finding with a certain amount of dismay that she has been staring straight at the Soldier’s delectable backside this entire time she’s been lost in her thoughts, and a good thing he’s turned around, too, or he’d have seen her. She could just die here on this stool.

The hand he absently brings up to nudge at a plate in that shiny arm of his is flecked with bits of pastry, and it occurs to her that perhaps he should not be bringing the pastry together at all. She should have done that herself, since she has two fully waterproof—and pastry-proof—hands to work with. Had he used that glimmering metal hand to rinse the berries? Had he gotten it wet at all? She realizes that she’s been too focused on other aspects of his stunning form to recall for sure.

Drat. At least she has thought of it now, anyway. She can insist that the washing up be left to her so that he doesn’t need to worry about shorting anything if his metal hand is submerged for too long. It looks the farthest thing from watertight with all those little seams and ridges, and the sleek overlapping plates, and the ripple they make when they move.

Yes. That’s a plan, anyway. She’ll do the washing up while the pastry chills, and then he can roll it out for her. With his powerful arms and magnificent shoulders, applying gentle pressure as though massaging the—

Polina clears her throat and unfolds the cloth, refolding it so the chillier side is exposed. She really does need to cool off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.


	12. First Impressions | Polina: A fawn in the grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably put it out there that the culture these characters are living in is very, very traditional about things like men's roles and women's roles, respect for elders, and so on. Some of these folks are ahead of their time, others aren't. And just as in real life, even really progressive people are not necessarily _always_ progressive in _every_ aspect of their lives and opinions. People are products of their environment. 
> 
> In short: Washing dishes is a universal chore, despite whatever Polina believes. ^_^
> 
> Also..... we're so close to pie! I swear! ^_^'

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

“Right,” she says, mustering all her energy and determination to finish strong after a promising round of washing up.

And it _had_ been promising, with nary a stray thought dedicated to the Soldier’s exquisite musculature or his ideal height or his polished leather straps or his deadly weaponry or… Well, or any of the other marvelous, delectable virtues wrapped up in the undeniably appetizing package that was the Soldier.

Sure, the Soldier had looked for a moment like he was going to raise a challenge when she declared she would be washing the dishes. And she wouldn’t have wanted to argue with him—arguing might lead to a raised voice or a sharpened tone, and given how much the Soldier’s flannel-soft voice affects her, she can see about three dozen ways a heated growl from him could go terribly wrong, both for her self-control and for her husband in the next room who is probably standing on his last nerve.

But any argument the Soldier had been entertaining had died a shockingly quick death, especially considering how much dedication he’s shown to getting this pie right despite all odds against him. He’d barely gotten those unfairly pretty pink lips of his open to protest before he’d seemed to retreat into himself and mumble something she can only assume had been “understood.”

And then her victory hadn’t seemed quite so worthwhile, it’s true, but she still took it and ran. She had told him to make a pie for her, not to take over every kitchen duty while she watched and sipped her tea. She’s still the hostess, after all. And there’s the matter of his shiny metal arm and all that hot, soapy water… and she’s just going to stop herself _right_ there, thank you _ever_ so much.

Anyway, steaming, slippery suds aside—far, _far_ aside—she can’t fathom why he would have wanted to do the washing up in the first place. It’s just not a man’s chore. Though baking a pie wasn’t, either, and he should by all rights be sitting out in the other room with the other men.

Still. After all that work with the pastry, adding the damage of a soak in soapy water was just unnecessary. This was no mission that required trawling the bottom of a lake for signs of enemy surveillance devices, or lurking unseen amidst the reeds at a river’s edge while waiting until dark of night to launch an attack on an unsuspecting enemy force.

Polina clears her throat, and her thoughts. While she is certain the Soldier is entirely capable of enduring those field conditions for such an op, there is no need to endure any such hardship in her kitchen. A damp towel is surely much better for whatever electronics are contained in the sleek metal-plated shell of that arm. If he won’t look after his own best interests, someone else will have to, and she is up to that challenge.

And if looking after his best interests means a bit of cowed meekness slides back into the set of his shoulders… She’ll just have to find a way to remedy that later. She can’t have him breaking that arm of his to spare her the chore of washing dishes. Particularly not when there’s chilled pastry to roll out.

“So get the rolling pin out and we’ll flatten each half into a thin circle, very gently so we don’t tear anything or break the edges. We don’t want any holes in it.” She waits for him to go directly to the right place, since he seems to know her kitchen almost as well as she does, despite having spent very little time in it by comparison to the weeks she’s been here.

But he doesn’t. He just looks at her, waiting for further instruction. It’s curious, what things he knows and what things he doesn’t. He knew the colander, and he found all the measuring cups in short order, and somehow guessed exactly the saucepan she wanted for the lemon syrup. He knew where all the ingredients were. But rolling pins are where he trips. Curious.

She points toward the appropriate drawer, and from there he picks up her intention quickly enough, though she thinks she detects a hint of hesitation before he actually takes up the rolling pin. And he perhaps holds it a little more gingerly than she’d expect. It’s a very solid rolling pin, good hard wood, and he’s hardly likely to damage it with careless handling.

If anything, it’s more likely to do the damage if it gets dropped on a bare toe. She knows that from experience. And his boots—with the knives tucked into them promising violence—are thick enough, rugged enough, that he could purposely bring that rolling pin down on his feet with all the force he’d like, and each toe would escape without a bruise.

Except perhaps he’s capable of enough force to inflict damage even through the thick leather and the steel toe caps underneath. She can well imagine how much force he could put behind a blow, even using that graceful, long-fingered right hand of his. Perhaps with the _left_ , he’s powerful enough to… No, no. Not those thoughts. She was doing so well. _Fawn in the grass, Polinka._

“Start in the middle of the pastry,” she says, “and just lightly tap the rolling pin up to the top, and then from the middle again, down to the bottom.” This miming is much less risque than the rubbing of butter and flour, she is pleased to note as she taps the edge of her right hand up and down along her left palm. She might manage this pie yet.

“Then turn it to the side and do it again. You’ll need to dust the counter with flour whenever things start to stick.” She mimes this, too, pretending to reach into an imaginary flour canister and pinch up a bit of flour in her fingertips, and then lightly tossing her imaginary flour onto a counter.

It isn’t that she thinks he’ll require a demonstration, but… She doesn’t think she could handle it if there was a repeat of the salt-pinching. That is a lesson she considers well-learned. Better to over-explain than under. “Just sprinkle it on. As much as you need to unstick things, but not too much.”

He gives her a nod and, oh, his taps of rolling pin into pastry are so gentle there’s hardly even a dent in that pastry when he’s done. And this isn’t just residual timidity from being told to let her wash dishes. This is just him. How is this man any sort of assassin—whether by external command or with personal intent—when he’s so careful not to damage anything at all, even to put divots in pastry?

Except that, of course, all the violence is just held close, buried, waiting to be unleashed. She’s not a fool. She knows how that works. He has a very tight grip on all that potential explosive power. For all that he’s a placid lake when he wants to be, she’s certain he’s a veritable tsunami in the field. His extremes are just, well, more extreme than her husband’s. That’s all. This is just the soft side of that pendulum arc.

“Okay, um, a little… _harder_ than that. We’re trying to make it flat, remember, just gradually so.” There. And she didn’t even stutter when telling him to do it harder. That’s… that’s a success right there, though if she’s being as honest with herself as she strives to be, she’s had to set the bar painfully low to achieve that success.

Perhaps focusing on his gentle nature and naivete will be the trick to keeping her lascivious thoughts in check. Because _that_ sort of ignorance isn’t something that can just be turned off and on at will the way violence often can be. He is just too innocent to be on the receiving end of those sorts of thoughts. That’s all. She will _have_ to be better about that sort of thing now. For his sake.

…It would be much easier to be better about that sort of thing if his shoulders didn’t move like that, if the light didn’t shine off of that metal arm just so, if the knife at his back wasn’t _so_ dangerous-looking, if there wasn’t so much contrast between all of his hard physicality and all of his soft personality. Why does the flour-dappled fawn in her kitchen have to be such an appealing, reined-in cyclone of a man?

Polina swallows again, pours some more tea—and that’s the last of this pot… she wonders how long it will take him to notice that and brew her another, though it will run right through her—and rearranges the cloth on her cheeks while looking down at her teacup. Much safer to look down than at him. If she can’t keep her eyes from stalking every ripple of that metal triceps and each movement and breath shifting that leather around, she will just keep her eyes off him entirely.

And she actually manages to focus elsewhere, somewhere other than the dark, handsome shape at her counter rolling out her pastry. For a while. For a few minutes. Until he refills the kettle and lights a burner under it—without even turning around to see that she’s on her last cup of tea. She has a horrible, horrible thought.

Has he been making note of her this whole time? Keeping a tally? Marking out each sip she takes, how big a sip it is, how heavy or light the teapot is for each poured out teacup?

Oh she does hope not. If he’s this aware of the state of her tea without looking at her tea, how could he not be aware of the state of the rest of her? Oh, the mortification if he _did_ realize she was staring at his backside earlier. He hadn’t seemed to mind if he _had_ noticed, but how much of that is ignorance of her attraction to him, and how much is…

How had her Vovochka put it? “Conditioned acceptance,” she thinks it was. Compliance with a handler’s edicts, whether spoken or perceived. Like training a hunting dog to retrieve game without eating it, even if it’s hungry.

She’d dismissed that description out of hand—so many military, or maybe KGB, phrases sounded one way and were actually another, and surely that was just another of those that sounded worse than it was.

But he _did_ back down over the dishes, and well before he’d even stepped up fully to the argument. And he’s passively accepted all of her inappropriate behavior. And hadn’t he been expecting, possibly, for her to cast him right out of this kitchen? The hint of nervous anticipation she’d seen in his eyes was real enough.

Oh, what if he is just “conditioned” to accept whatever he’s presented with, even if that is lustful giggles and blatant ogling? What if he’s just so used to questioning nothing beyond asking for clarification that he doesn’t question her terribly inappropriate behavior?

What if he _does_ know just what sort of overheating she was suffering from, the places other than her cheeks that were so very warm just looking at him, and this display of ignorance is just that: a display? Something for her benefit, an attempt to help her embarrass herself that tiny bit less?

He surely can’t be an innocent, not looking like he looks, sounding like he sounds, moving like he moves. She is hardly the only woman whose better judgment is easily overcome by the promise of danger and a problem needing a solution. Someone else has been drawn to him before, certainly. He can’t possibly…

Though he’s “been kept apart” from others, so maybe that’s… Maybe he _is_ as unaware of her as that, despite knowing exactly when she is due to run out of tea. He could have blind spots. He doesn’t seem to have a name, after all. Even while being briefed she’d not learned of anything to call him but “Soldier,” and she knows what it looks like, what it _sounds_ like, when her husband is presenting her with a lovely screen that hides a less lovely piece of truth behind it.

“Soldier” is not a screen. It’s the closest thing this man has to a name.

But everyone has a name. You could forget any number of things if there’d been a horrible accident or head injury, but your name would stay with you, surely. Either the name your mother gave you, or a name your friends gave you, or… Anyway, a name of _some_ kind would stick.

Galya’s brother knows his name perfectly well, and he’d been in a coma for a whole week after that beam fell on him. Polina knows—she’d sent Galya and her family flowers and breakfast pastries every single day for nearly half a month, and the only thing that changed was where she sent them after that seventh day.

So if the Soldier somehow doesn’t realize that he has no name, he might not realize that she finds him unbearably, leg-clenchingly attractive. Or does he realize he has no name—and that she’s been getting lost in his shoulders and his eyes and his everything else—and it’s just another thing he accepts? Though how could anyone accept living without a name?

And how would she ever know which it was if she didn’t ask him? This is almost certainly why she is not to ask him any questions with substance to them. But she wants to dive into that placid lake and learn all the currents hidden beneath the surface. It’s just so fascinating. How could anyone blame her? He’s like a literal leather-bound mystery novel.

And she is, after all, her own woman. She has a week at her disposal to prise up the outer layers and discover what it is he hides so deep in his eyes. Read a few of his pages, maybe. Suss out the plot of him. Find out “who done it” as they say.

Just… not in her kitchen, perhaps. Not right here, or right now. Not with an audience in the next room who has expressly stated that she is to do no such thing and who comprises the highest authorities on the matter of the Soldier. Not within hours of meeting this man. She does have it in her to be patient, after all. Just… not circumspect in the face of all this leather and bottled up power. Obviously.

She would like to attribute at least a little blame for that to the leather-bound mystery-menace himself, but she does believe in personal honesty, and… That is entirely her fault. Even if he _is_ aware of the effect he’s having on her—and he might not be—he’s decided to feign ignorance rather than respond in any way, possibly to spare her feelings and help her save face. No, all the fault there is her own.

And she’s not even certain he knows more than he’s letting on. He’s just so… Earnest. She refuses to believe a man could be that earnest and also lying, whether in his words or in his actions. She’s heard a good many liars in their element—lying is just about the only thing Pasha ever does, after all, and she suspects a good deal of what Sasha has to say is just as crosswise to the truth.

No. She might not know for absolute certain whether the Soldier is a little wiser to her troubles than he seems, but there is something so utterly genuine about him that she refuses to believe there’s a lie in his obliviousness. At the very most, he’s good at hiding. There is a world and a half of difference between putting a lie out in the open and holding a truth deep inside.

He’s busying himself with measuring out leaves for her tea, so she takes the opportunity to look at the counter where he’d stood rolling out pastry. She can’t see it perfectly from her stool, at least not without craning her neck, but she can see well enough that there are two very round circles of pastry on the counter. For a man who didn’t know what a rolling pin _was_ , he’s certainly mastered the art of using one to roll out pie crust.

…He could probably master quite a few things in short order…  

She swallows. And, oh, isn’t that just the worst wrench she could have thrown in her works? Oh, the _things_ this man could _master_. The power he could put behind—

Polina sighs. Whatever happened to that determination to be better than this, to leave this flour-dappled fawn to himself without following his every movement with her eyes like a stalking wildcat? Because whether he’s fully aware and hiding that awareness or utterly in the dark, he _does_ seem to pick up on things quickly—and lets that knowledge be seen—once he’s unlocked the logic behind them. And she has been very, very obvious.

She wonders how soon he will discover the truth behind her blushing, assuming he has not already, and what he might have to say about that. In that voice of his. Or would he say nothing at all, and just accept it? It could go so many ways. If he does respond… will he scold her? Will she see a temper flash across those stunning blue-gray eyes? Or would he be pleased? Would… would _he_ blush? Would he smile? What would his lips look like curved in a smile?

Even though she might enjoy a scolding too much, she still thinks that would be far safer than a smile. It will be safer if he’s upset by her attentions than if he were pleased.

Safer for everyone.

Polina could, of course, put her hopes on the Soldier—uhg, if ever a man needed a name, it’s this man—simply overlooking her antics. He could have a blind spot there. It’s possible. He didn’t know rolling pins, and thought mushrooms might belong in a fruit pie. He doesn’t appear to register his lack of a name. He could honestly continue to think that she is… ill, or something. Overheating, he had said. He could just go on thinking that.

He sets the new pot of tea in front of her on the table, gentle as ever, not even a thump. His hands are covered in flour again—though “still” might be more apt a word for the metal hand—and her eyes cannot help but be drawn to the dusting of white along the leather of his uniform. _He’s a fawn_ , she tells herself. _A fawn in the grass. Behave yourself, Polinka._

“Thank you,” she says, tearing her eyes away from his torso with more effort than she should reasonably require. It really is a magnificent torso. A leather-swaddled work of art. She tries to concentrate on pouring tea and not spilling, and while she’s a little shaky, she doesn’t spill a drop. Though who could blame her, really, if she had? Surely no one could claim steady hands in the presence of this delicious epitome of the masculine form with his angular—

“Is the…” Polina hurriedly swallows some tea to mask the hitch in her voice, and isn’t sure she’s succeeded in anything but scalding her tongue, which she deserves. “Is the pastry very flat?”

He nods, and—oh, bless him, the dear—brings her one of the pastry circles, cradled delicately across his palms and forearms, his wide-splayed fingers supporting it with what she can only describe as tenderness, as it drapes artfully over the sides of his arms and hands.

He moves as though the pastry might slither right out of his grasp if he isn’t careful enough, but also like he might break it if he looks at it wrong. It would be comical to see such a solidly built military man take such anxious care of a bit of pastry… if it didn’t hint at a deep-seated certainty of catastrophe lurking around the corner.

And the pastry is well-rolled. She reaches out to lift one of the edges up and inspect the thickness, and then she forces herself to stop thinking about thickness, and things that are thick, and how thick certain bits of the man standing over her with a round of pastry might be. A round of pastry he rubbed together and rolled out with such movements of his shoulders…

She drops the flap of pastry to hang once more from his hands and chews on her lip for a moment before she trusts herself to speak. “Good— Um.” She lets out a breath that would be a sigh if it weren’t so close to a pant. “Good job… Soldier.”

Some part of her had thought he might look pleased or proud when told that he’d done well—and why should she have thought otherwise?—but if anything, it prompts a distinct wash of discomfort across his features, there and gone in a flash. There’s no reason praise should inspire that…

But, really, her praise is not the most logical source for the reaction. Hasn’t she just caressed his pie crust and then heaved a sigh? Surely that sort of thing would make even the most oblivious man uncomfortable, if he truly is oblivious.

Though she’s at a loss for an explanation of _that_ being what clues him in or prompts him to acknowledge her behavior, when he hasn’t seemed to notice her eyes glued to his body— _such_ a body—or her frankly alarming lack of composure.

Yet another layer of curiosity to untangle. But she has a whole week to solve these mysteries. And it’s high time their pie was in that oven. The kitchen is getting ever warmer now that it’s preheated, and she knows it isn’t just her and her many inappropriate thoughts. Though she’s certain those have a good deal to do with it. Her cheeks may never recover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  Figured since Polina’s coworkers get mentioned from time to time, I should add them in here when they appear, just briefly, so it’s not as much hassle for folks to keep them straight.
> 
> In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son with the sweet tooth and a variety of other designations.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.
> 
> Pavel Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s oldest still-living son; a successful politician with a trend toward scandal and a temper. Also called Pasha, Pashenka, Pashka (rudely). The Soldier mostly thinks of him as the older politician.
> 
> Galina/Galya. A coworker of Polina’s whose brother was injured in a factory accident and has never been the same.


	13. First Impressions | Polina: Everything in its place

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

By some miracle, Polina manages to keep herself in check while directing him to line the pie plate with one of the pastry rounds. And his gentle approach to everything comes in handy for pressing the pastry in without a single tear. She does not praise him for that, though it merits the praise.

After all, what if that _is_ what makes him uncomfortable? What if that glimmer of unease earlier really _had_ been about the “good job” and not about her fondling his pastry? What if he’s both certain of failure and also afraid of success? Why does he have to be so difficult to get an accurate read on? She’s perceptive, damnit. Why can’t she perceive him? It’s been well over an hour, and one-on-one at that!

Her frustration helps her manage to giggle only a little bit while the pie is filled and swirled over with the lemon syrup. It isn’t as though she can help recalling the image of his finger in his mouth, or the feeling of her own finger on her tongue, or the flicker of “what if” that had flashed across her mind in that moment.

Certainly no one could fault her for that giggle, either earlier or now. It’s not every day there is a visual to go along with such thoughts of a man’s finger on her tongue… or… other parts of him… on her tongue, or just at her lips, even. She knows what a good piece of leather tastes like, and he has so much leather that could be licked, to say nothing of what lies beneath it all…

And she manages to get them through punching out some leaf shapes from the top crust without thinking too hard about anything, even when her instructions are met with a head tilt and the tiniest of frowns, followed by an inquiry—and is that an undercurrent of exasperation in his velvety-soft voice?—about their earlier mandate to _avoid_ putting holes in the pastry.

He even deposits that decoratively vented—she does _not_ think about other things that could be vented, possibly to provide a tempting view of the inside of something, or to allow heat to escape, or… or _juices_ to escape, or… or…

She takes a breath and lets it out slowly.

He gets the top crust centered perfectly on the pie, anyway, without her getting _too_ hot and bothered. As it should be, since it’s a pie crust and not… not anything that should rightly prompt impropriety in the thoughts of a blissfully married woman. Especially not in the presence of a flour-dappled innocent like the Soldier.

Who might be not be unaware. Who might be withholding secret judgement.

He brings over the pie with its neatly trimmed edges—she isn’t expecting anything less than precision on that front, and he does not disappoint her—to be inspected, setting it down on the table in front of her and taking a step back. Out of her reach? Does he think she will grope him next? Or is he merely trying to avoid looming? Though he could loom over her any day he likes…

And it does very much pass inspection. The decorative cut-outs are clean around the edges, with neat, pointy corners. The pastry is still as evenly thin as ever with no patching required. There is exactly the same amount of overlapping pastry all the way around the pie plate, with the top crust ever so slightly further out than the bottom.

There’s a utilitarian sort of precision to this pie’s crust, and in any other circumstances, she would assume that the baker should be pleased by his work. But he is not looking at her with anything like pride in his eyes. He is so hesitant—almost fearful—that it throws her off her game… such as it had been.

Why the change? He looks almost as uncertain as when she first walked in to find him in her kitchen! Polina tries to pinpoint anything she might have done or said, or maybe something she hasn’t done or said, something that might have prompted this shift. If anything, she’s been _better_ at controlling herself after washing up, as though her brain was given a good scrubbing alongside the dishes.

But here he stands, clearly waiting for her to criticize his work, to declare it unacceptable, possibly to insult his effort as being insufficient. This man! She thinks back to her own first pie crusts, guided by her sweet departed grandmother and looking entirely a mess. She’d laugh at the thought that he could be ashamed of his work when hers had been so much poorer, but something inside her refuses to laugh in any way that he could interpret as disapproval or derision.

No, his demeanor pulls out that sense of injustice, instead of laughter. And a whole host of motherly nurture. She has the pie in reach, and he is right there to learn a thing or two about finishing a pie he starts. And if he’s expecting her to disapprove, he’s going to be disappointed. This is a man who needs to learn how to crimp pastry, not be scolded out of her kitchen.

“Crimping a pie crust takes a delicate touch, erm, Soldier.” She tries and fails to bite back a disgruntled sigh.

How _can_ they manage to speak to him on a daily basis for years and not assign him an actual name? She’s struggling to manage even two hours without a _name_ to use. “Soldier” is a _not_ a name.

Polina idly wonders if this is something she might be able to fix, the way she intends to fix other things with baked goods during the week and following. There are a rather large number of things that need to be fixed about the Soldier’s situation, she’s decided—among them his lack of a decent mother figure, or sister, or grandmother, or special lady, or…

Well, there’s the need for some home-cooked meals, anyway. Something this secret Soldier can enjoy between killing people and, she supposes, killing different people. Surely she can assign him a name and fix that much for him while also filling him up with good things to eat. As an added bonus, a name would help him keep a sweetheart, certainly. A man as well-built as he is should not be lonely, ever.

She gestures toward the second stool tucked under her little table across from her, since this will be much easier if he sits. The pie itself could be crimped from his standing height—such a height, too, perfect for nuzzling up against, except that she would never—but why not make things as easy as they can be?

He merely stands by her side, though, eyes on her and on the pie in front of her, hands held at his back in a very attentive pose that happens to put his entire chest on display in its strappy leather wrappings. And that happens to emphasize his shoulders in a truly unfair manner. And that happens to put his hands close to that dagger she’s itching to see put to some use or other…

It should not be so very, very difficult to refrain from having inappropriate thoughts when interacting with a man who possibly isn’t even aware of the potential thoughts that could be thought. Who probably is still interpreting the color in her cheeks for _just_ a bit of heat. Who is a fawn in the grass for all that he looks like a panther in the jungle.

Still, though, she does try. Even if he won’t sit down but instead must stand there with his soulful eyes resting on her, in that pose. Polina takes a breath and tries harder. _Fawn in the grass. Fawn in the grass!_

“First, we lift the edges up a little.” She does so, keeping her elbows wide so that he can see what her fingers are up to through the ring made by her arms and chest. “Then we’re going to tuck the top under the bottom, like so.”

She makes the mistake of looking up to see if he’s following, and _oh_ , he _is_. He is looking right at her fingers, which she suddenly notices happen to be very near her bosom from his viewing angle. Her bosom, which is perhaps a bit more set off by this neckline than she’d considered when she got dressed this morning.

She feels herself flushing hot all the way down her neck. Possibly to her clavicles. Which he can see, of course. And is looking down at. From very close by. And from above. _Oh, Polinka, why? Why have you set yourself up for these things?_

But there’s nothing to do about it but continue, and try not to squirm too much. She can only hope that nothing she does draws his attention away from the pie. He’s looking at her fingers. And at the pastry. And not at the rest of her. And if his eyes are so blue and so gray and so well-framed by those lashes—and oh, he has such beautiful eyelashes; she can see them so much better from here—that’s… that’s neither here nor there, and it is not pie.

“A-and then we’re…” _Breathe, Polinka._ This cannot be any worse than the rubbing of nipples earlier. Pastry! The rubbing of _pastry!_ Oh, why can’t she just melt into the floor. Just… She just has to say the right words and not the wrong ones. And she has to not look up at him. She _must not_ look up into those eyes that are paying such close attention to her. That are watching every twitch of her fingers, every hitch of her breath, every little movement she makes.

Oh, please let him actually, truly be oblivious, and not judging her from the bottom of that placid lake that he presents to the world.

“W-we just— And then we— We—” She can’t. She can’t make the words happen. All that wants to come out is a giggle. A mortified little giggle that threatens to send her toppling right off this stool and— Oh, oh he would catch her, wouldn’t he?

And then she would be _in his arms_ , held as gently as he’d held that pastry earlier, and as tenderly. And she would be looking up into his eyes with those lashes, and he might ask her if she was alright, with that velvet-soft, flannel-wrapped _voice_ coming out of those— those soft, expressive _lips_ , and his eyes would be so filled with concern, and maybe he would lean closer to make sure she was unharmed, and…

And…

And she really would die. She’d burst right into flames and set the whole dacha on fire with her embarrassment.

Polina shakes herself briefly, clears her throat, downs the rest of her cup of tea, and takes a steadying breath that, she realizes too late, has almost certainly caused her bosom to heave. She does not look up at him to see what his reaction is to all of that. She doesn’t dare take such a risk.

She also doesn’t dare try to speak as she slowly, carefully—but with trembling fingers—folds over another bit of pastry and then crimps it, tucking her left index finger gently from the inside edge of the pie into the thumb and index finger of her right hand from the outside, pressing her fingers together to create a wavy little scallop.

She slides the pie away from herself and brings her hands to rest in her lap where he will surely not look at them while they shake. “Like that,” she squeaks breathlessly.

There is no movement from the Soldier, not to take the pie in hand, not to leave the room so that she might die in peace, not even to pour her a new cup of tea. The still silence finally goes on long enough that Polina risks a little peek up at him. He is…

Well, yes. Staring at her. Of course. She knew that on some level.

But she cannot glean the faintest hint of a meaning from his expression. His eyes are just a little narrowed, but from the underside of his eyelids and in no way a frown. His head is ever so slightly tilted to one side. His lips don’t bear thinking about. And the whole of that might be rattling off entire encyclopedic volumes of knowledge, but it’s an ocean of Latin surrounding her little Russian rowboat.

The Soldier watches her eyes (far wider than she would like them to be, but she can’t seem to control that), but also her cheeks (most likely a cherry red by this point), her lips (which she cannot help but chew on nervously)—her whole face, really—taking in the details bit by bit, like he’s memorizing something to sculpt later. And maybe he is. Maybe he has hobbies.

And almost worse, he _does_ look down into her lap where she’s wringing her hands, and looks back up, noting the flush along her decolletage as he goes. But doesn’t linger there, she notes with a bizarre mixture of relief and vindication and disappointment.

Relief: He isn’t interested in her bosom, which surely anyone would agree is for the best. Vindication: He doesn’t seem to place any more importance on her bosom than on any other part of her, which she hopes confirms his naivete. But also, disappointment: She has a _lovely_ bosom, made lovelier by her pregnancy, and her ladies don’t like being ignored.

More to the point, he will not _stop_ looking at her. Is he confused? Putting together pieces? Disapproving? Upset? Curious? Planning something? What? What does that look mean?

Whatever it is, he seems to come to some conclusion, because instead of turning his attention to the pie, he picks up her teacup and the teapot, and removes both of them to the sink with an unmistakable air of finality. She suddenly feels less like a wanton flirt and more like a schoolgirl being told she’s had enough cookies for the day.

It is… _such_ an incredible relief. She could slide off this stool from the sudden release of all that tension. But she won’t, of course. Because she suspects he _would_ have to catch her, and that would bring all the tension right back to a boil. No, no. She refuses to even entertain such a thought.

She is very busily refusing these thoughts when he places a new cloth on the table in front of her, just shy of wet enough to leave a puddle, followed by a glass of water and a plate of little crackers dusted with sesame seeds. She wonders where those came from. She doesn’t remember having them on hand… maybe they were part of the supply run…

“You should eat something to maintain your blood sugar.” He sounds… apologetic, for some reason. But he has nothing to be apologetic _for!_ This is _her_ problem. “I should have realized earlier. I’m sorry.”

She gapes up him, not even sure how to react to that, and then realizes that beyond not having a clue what to do with that sort of unnecessary and misguided apology, she is utterly unprepared to respond to the resignation written all over his face.

“…What?” she finally asks. _Oh, and isn’t this a role-reversal, Polya._ What even is happening today?

“Is…” And his eyes cut down and to the side, away from her, with a little frown. “…that not a baby’s worth of crackers?” His face flickers into some blend of frustration, disappointment, nervousness, and fear, and then he is setting the rest of the package of crackers on the table, all the while not meeting her eyes once.

“Here.” The word sounds forced out of a throat that wants to close up, like he’s trying to decide whether to speak or remain silent, but both options are guaranteed to lead to terrible things. She can hear the hesitation between that and the next as though it were spoken along with the words. “There’s more.”

“ _What?”_ Seriously, actually, what? What is happening? The flannel of his voice has just about smothered itself into a dead monotone, still soft, but utterly lifeless.

He shifts his stance, clearly uncomfortable and just as clearly expecting something he’s not looking forward to, something inevitable and awful. “That is the most easily digestible item in your pantry. If you pick the seeds off.” His eyes dart up to meet hers for the merest moment, and then slide to the side. “But you should eat the seeds. For the protein.”

And then he has the pie in his hands and is back at the counter with his back to her. From the sounds of the pie plate moving about on the counter, he’s taking care of the crimping, turning the pie each time so that the crimps are exactly at the same angle from the center.

Polina mutely picks up a cracker and puts it in her mouth. The crunching is good. Distracting. The new rag is also distracting, when she presses it to her cheeks and the back of her neck. He’s given her a lot to unpack just now, almost too much. So much, in fact, that there is no room left over for lustful thinking.

What does he expect from her? And why does it make him nervous? And… “a baby’s worth of crackers?” What does that even mean? Easily digestible? Blood sugar? She needs the protein? What does he think is happening here? Why is he apologizing?

At the very least, she is now fully certain that he has no concept whatsoever of flirtation, or lust, or anything of that sort. There’s been no display of outward ignorance to hide internal knowledge because there is no internal knowledge to be hidden. No prior experience to build on. It’s not her Russian and his Latin. It’s… Earth and outer space.

She knew more about these things as a teenaged girl than he does as a very well-formed adult man. How does that happen? Who is he, to have nothing to fall back on there? Even if he was raised into his role from a child—which had _better_ not be the case—there’s still… Still instincts. Human nature. Someone could surely be awkward, but to just not… even… notice these things…?

She manages, in something of a daze, to direct him to put the pie in the center of the middle rack of the oven, and to mark out 40 minutes so they can check on it. She also manages, in an equally dazed fog, to eat the better part of that package of crackers while he tackles the baking drawer unprompted, carefully nesting each measuring cup and spoon, and lining up the spatulas and cake tester and whisk.

 _Everything in its place,_ she thinks, listening to the delicate clink of metal on metal, glass on glass, glass on metal. He was standing in front of the silverware when she came in. She’s not a betting woman, but she would place a large bet on the silverware being impeccably organized now, rather than haphazardly tossed in the drawers in her rush to move on to other things.

He must have put things away when they arrived. That is how he knows where things are. He would not have set things on a counter and been satisfied. He would not have put things on cupboard shelves wherever they fit. He would have investigated to find the exact right place for every single item.

Yes. That seems to be the Soldier’s preference. Neat, orderly, tidy, precise. The pastry must have driven him nuts. But he took great care not to let her see that, just as he took great care to lift and settle the pastry into the pie plate, pressing it in place with just enough pressure to ensure there was no air between pastry and plate, but not so much pressure to stretch or tear or even leave an impression in the pastry’s surface.

She supposes that sort of attention to detail comes in handy when killing people. Knowing exactly where to apply bullet, blade, or whatever else. Knowing the exact amount of pressure required to cave in a skull or shatter a rib. Keeping track of each enemy, each target, each ally. Keeping track of her husband in the field and keeping him safe. Keeping track of her tea.

A man like that must maintain his thoughts very precisely, surely. That must be how he’s so good at letting her see only the merest ripple on the surface instead of what might be—what must be—an oceanic current underneath. Everything in its place, after all, all lined up and ready to serve at a moment’s notice, or put away when not in use.

She imagines the inside of his head is the most impeccably organized library of knowledge and unspoken responses this side of the equator, with everything in its place…

Except for the large, inexplicable gaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.


	14. First Impressions | Soldat: Why is pie so fucking horrible?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, poor chapter count! I knew it, Horatio...

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

So the wife with the warm disposition wants him to fetch something called a “rolling pin” and to use that to make the cold, hard pastry lumps into circles that are flat and thin. Holes are bad. Tears are bad. Broken edges are bad.

The Soldier spends a half-second on kitchen inventory once more, and comes up with nothing that would qualify for both rolling something flat—as seems to be indicated in the tool’s designation—and also being gentle enough to avoid damaging the twin pastry lumps.

The eternal question presents itself for the umpteenth time: Ask for clarification, make an almost certainly incorrect guess, or wait for further instruction? With the General, he always knows the answer to the question—just ask if he’s in the area, make the guess if he isn’t, wait for him if he’s on the way.

It’s a pretty standard rubric to use for most handlers, really. The General is the only one it _always_ works with. And his son with the sweet tooth. There are also handlers it never works with. The Lieutenant, for one. He will reprimand for a question, for any little mistake, or for the delay taken by waiting. Better in that case to just fuck up as fast as he can and hope for the best.

The wife with the warm disposition seems to be a candidate for the “wait and she will talk more” approach. Well. Talk and giggle and clear her throat and flush along the cheeks. But she’ll talk, anyway. And her chatter has turned out to be informative. There is only one item in this kitchen that he’s seen that fits part of her request, and he…  

He could be wrong, and often is—is a consummate and perennial failure—but he would like to think he has not fucked up sufficiently yet for her to demand he fetch the club.

He also can’t quite see the application of the club being conducive to striking pastry hard enough to flatten it and yet _not_ ending up with a broken and torn mess riddled with holes. Though perhaps one could apply steady pressure and roll the club along the pastry, instead of whacking the intended target with it the way the General’s wretched wife does.

Still, he will wait, instead. If he has earned that treatment—probably for presuming to challenge her over the dishes and the prospect of soaking the fucking pastry out of the metal hand—then he’s earned it. And he’ll still get that same treatment regardless, even if he makes her wait. She’s perceptive… but probably won’t know that he’s being obstinate.

If he puts an appropriately blank expression on—more primary nature than secondary at this point, so no worries there—she might just point him in the right direction, or describe the thing. Something. She might even decide that it’s a display of stupidity and not him being less than perfectly compliant. She… is not a handler, and clearly hasn’t been trained as one. It should be okay. Depending on the protocols.

Which he doesn’t know.

But he wills the roiling tide of nauseated need-to-know-but-cannot-ask to go back down where it belongs. He can afford neither distractions nor weakness if he is to please the wife with the warm disposition. She’s a tricky one, in a whole different way than most people are.

And yes—there she goes, after her face flickers through confusion to pity to that something-else she wears frequently, that he can’t read, but that is very, very warm and the source of her designation. Pointing. Exactly the way he had hoped she would, though not at all in a direction he likes.

The club it is, then. Spectacular.

He’s not _supposed_ to be in this kitchen, though it’s borderline allowed. This operation bends the protocol set out by the General’s cantankerous wife, but is technically okay because she is not here. The General doesn’t enforce his wife’s protocols when she is not here.

He is still not supposed to be lingering around civilians without a handler in the immediate vicinity, but it isn’t forbidden enough for the handlers in the other room to intervene, or they would have long before now. It’s just out of protocol enough to be unsettling.

But touching the club with anything but his face or whatever else the General’s wife swings it at is so far beyond protocol that it has never come up that he can remember.

And now the wife with the warm disposition wants him to _use_ the club. On the pastry. And avoid putting holes in the pastry. That pastry is a malevolent butter-flour glue that he can feel hardening inside his hand with every passing minute. But it’s a lot more delicate than skin when it’s still fresh and soft.

How the hell does one hit it with the club and not break it? Not put holes in it. Not tear it. The club does that to skin. Pastry is so much weaker than skin. But she didn’t just _ask_ him to get the club out—or the “rolling pin,” he supposes, as it’s named when being applied to pastry and not faces. That was a directive, not a request. No upward inflection. He is expected to fetch that club.

Maybe the new protocols are different enough that they can override older ones, and not just bend them. The General’s wife is not here. She… maybe she will not know. Maybe she will not find out. The General knows that he is in here, with the wife with the warm disposition. He knows that there is a pie being made. His hearing is… not quite as good as the Soldier’s, but still far better than most people’s after—

 _Don’t go there, Soldier._ He backs off, skips ahead.

If the General is not objecting, maybe his wife will not object, either, even if she does learn that he has spent all this time in her kitchen handling her tools. Picking up her club—rolling pin, he corrects himself. He buries a sigh deep inside where not even an exhalation makes it to the surface. Fuck his life. Today is one bad decision after another.

He should stride directly out of this kitchen and beg for protocols to follow. It would earn him something horrible, but whatever horrible thing they decided on would be accompanied by the answers he needs. And then at least he would _know_ all the ways he has been failing all over this kitchen. Wouldn’t just have to guess.

That’s a rude option, though. It would indicate a lack of trust in the directions of the wife with the warm disposition. It would… possibly hurt her feelings. Her feelings matter, even if she is bringing the club into play. The rolling pin. Maybe the new designation signifies that it will only be applied to pastry.

He knows he’s not lucky like that, but he picks the thing up anyway. An order is an order, even if she doesn’t know she’s giving it. It’s a very solid club, good hard wood. He already knows that from the other side, though. Knows that it packs an incredible amount of force when swung hard. Does a fair amount of damage, too, though not nearly as much as some of the hammers and wrenches in the shed.

That has to do with surface area and shape and density and drag forces. He knows this because he’s paid attention to the engineering teams and their “shop talk” about solid objects and fluid velocity. Something-something windage loss. Something-something laminar flow. The result is that the club moves a lot slower than the hammers and wrenches. Also, wood is softer than metal. That much is just obvious.

According to the wife with the warm disposition, whose words wash over him but are accompanied by demonstrations, he will be trying not to apply any force or inflict any damage on the pastry while flinging flour at it and rotating it in a clockwise manner. It’s a non-standard use of a club if he’s ever heard of one.

But if anything can use a weapon in ways it’s not intended to be used, he figures he is that thing. Time to learn the use of this particular type of cudgel. He will think of it as though it were a length of piping ripped out of a handy wall in a pinch. It’s got roughly the same heft as some of the pipes he’s used to turn human opposition into fleshy paving stones underfoot. It’s just thicker, is all. That’s fine. He can work with that.

He stares at his pastry.

It’s harder than he anticipated, bringing himself to smash the pastry gently with the clu—rolling pin. He hates pastry. That much is true. But this is _his_  pastry. He _made_  this shit. This lump of disgusting congealed flour and cow grease is… it’s… his. He can’t quite put a word to the sensation that makes any sense at all. He’s made plenty of messes without getting attached to them. Granted, they were bloodier messes, but…

“Okay, um, a little harder than that.”

The wife with the warm disposition radiates heat at him. Not the kind that sits in her cheeks and occasionally spreads down her neck, but the kind that is… misplaced tenderness. The same kind she had earlier when they started this nightmare project.

“We’re trying to make it flat,” she continues. “Remember? Just gradually so.”

Yes, he _does_ remember. _Thanks, doll._ No holes. No tears. No broken edges. Throw the flour at it. Tap it with the goddamn club. Turn it a bunch. She hasn’t said it has to be round, but he can guess that much. This is going around the blueberries, and the whole mess is getting dumped into that squat bowl over there with the flat bottom. It’s a round bowl.

The required shape of the pastry is possibly the only logical thing about the whole operation so far. He doesn’t see why he can’t just put the flat-bottomed bowl on top of the pastry and squish it down flat that way. It would be far gentler than beating it with a fucking club that has a history of smashing cheekbones. But she wants it done with the—rolling pin. So, fine.

It takes time, but he’s got the pair of pastry blobs looking a lot less like lumpy clumps of plastic explosive and a lot more like floppy, flour-dusted bits of rubber gym mat when the wife with the warm disposition pours her last cup of tea. The pot is definitely empty when she sets it down, and based on the amount of liquid he heard sloshing into her cup, he has a few minutes before he has to abandon his ugly pastry babies to make her more—got to water the real baby, after all. Keep it hydrated in there.

There is a third teapot in the farthest cupboard to the right. He has no idea why people have so many of these things when it’s objectively easier to rinse out and reuse a single teapot. But it’s a convenient way to avoid entering her space more than he has to, so he opts out of complaining about the redundancy this time.

As an added bonus, he has seen the concentration of tea she prefers, and can put the exact right amount of leaves in for her this time around once the water boils so that she doesn’t have to adjust anything. Maybe a success like that will help counter all the ways he’s failed during this operation. She’s been eyeing him closely enough; she’s got to have racked up a number of them, if she’s keeping a tally. He knows he has.

She has already eaten the crunchy sweet things that went with her first pot of tea, but he sets the second teapot down without the accompaniment. Neither the General nor the sweet tooth handler appreciate more than one little plate of that sort of thing, even if they are drinking tea and talking late into the night.

It’s a guess, but he feels relatively confident in that guess. The wife with the warm disposition lives with the sweet tooth handler, so there must be some overlapping tea habits. And there were too few packages of crunchy sweet tea things for there to be enough for all the tea these people drink if they are replenished along with the teapot each time.

She issues a “thank you,” which he takes to mean that his guess is at least acceptable, even if not perfectly accurate, and then… asks to inspect his work. It is probably a matter of moving forward in operation blueberry pie, and not a cause-effect situation. She has her tea now, and so the next step is to make sure the pastry is ready.

That’s logical. Probably not a trap. He has shown her all the other things as he did them to make sure they weren’t complete disasters. So he nods and brings her one of the circles. Pastry, he has learned, is a devious asshole that will apparently tear if handled roughly.

He handles it with exceptional caution.

As it happens, he will have to forgive the idiot spatula for some—but not all—of the uselessness he has accused it of. It is a very good tool for lifting up the edge of a circle of pastry without deforming said pastry. For everything else, it is utter garbage.

Instead of merely looking at the circle of pastry—and therefore not jostling it in any way—the wife with the warm disposition reaches out and picks part of it up. The Soldier can imagine the next several events very clearly in a single half-instant.

The carefully calculated balance of the pastry will be off, the flour will have made it very not-sticky, there will not be enough friction to maintain the pastry’s position in his hands, and the pastry will slither toward the floor. This much seems clear and guaranteed.

From there, events branch.

He could catch it, but it would not be evenly thick or round or free of holes and tears and breaks in the edges if he does that. It would be a wadded mess. He would need to… What are the steps? Put it in the refrigerator. Wait half an hour. Gently smash it with the club, turning it and throwing flour at it. Roll it smooth. Keep it round.

Or he could let it land, but the chances of it landing in such a way as to be salvageable are not high. He has not cleaned this kitchen’s floor yet. He cannot be certain that the tile the pastry lands on will be free from contamination. It seems very likely the opposite is the case. He will have start over entirely. The metal hand will never be the same.

Either way, she will probably put the “rolling pin” to its intended use, once the pastry has been destroyed.

For all that he is not typically lucky, none of that happens. She puts the pastry down again without it leaping from his hands to splat on the tile below. The Soldier takes the two and a half seconds required to return his heart rate to baseline. Even if pastry doesn’t smell fear, it can probably feel his pulse through his flesh fingertips.

He would rather not rile the pastry up. Give it ideas. Prompt an escape attempt.

“Good— Um.” There is a little huff of breath. Disappointed? Upset? Frustrated? Angry? “Good job, Soldier.”

…What.

Why? Which job? What did the breath mean? That is the key to interpreting the meaning of the “good job, Soldier.” Maybe the pastry was supposed to fall. Maybe it was a test and he was supposed to fail it, and she wanted the pastry to land on the floor after all. But he was handling it carefully enough that it didn’t, and so she cannot use that sort of catastrophic failure against him.

Failure via success. He does that a lot. But that’s usually with the… But she doesn’t seem the type for that. She is nothing like the Lieutenant. She would not try to engineer a failure and then be disappointed when he succeeded anyway… and then praise him for thwarting her simply to see him stagger internally.

He doesn’t deserve the praise, but… He also doesn’t think he’s warranted the not-really-praise, that particular form of reprimand that is usually easier to see coming, where he is praised not despite having not earned it but _because_ he has not earned it. So that he can feel horrible for a little while without any effort on their part. It happens.

He remains as still as he can be so that the pastry is not jostled by a tremor in the flesh hand—he is very good at remaining still—and retraces his mental steps. Usually this sort of praise happens when he was supposed to fail. When he was supposed to forget a piece of information that he was not supposed to have. When he was supposed to have not been paying that close attention to—

There it is. That is probably where he failed. This is because of the tea. The inspection followed directly after the new pot of tea. The praise-that-is-a-trap followed directly after the inspection.

He wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to her consumption of tea. That… makes a lot of sense, actually. That is the same damn mistake he made upstairs, paying too much attention. Looking at things he isn’t supposed to notice. Seeing things people don’t want him to see. And then admitting to it via carelessly demonstrating his knowledge.

It’s pretty rare for him to make the same mistake twice in a row like this, with both failures so close together, not even just the same day, but within hours of each other. But he failed to announce his failure earlier, so the General didn’t issue the correction that might have spurred him to improve.

The General must have known about the failure. Maybe the General didn’t reprimand him because his grandson was there. Or… because… Maybe she’s supposed… This could be training for her. She could be… learning how to issue reprimands. Practicing.

Would she, though? Would she set a trap, and then spring it, and then use the “good job, Soldier” to— No. No, he read her right earlier. She’s got too warm a disposition for that. She isn’t cold down at her core like the Lieutenant, whose insides are frozen solid as any cryochamber, and who is about as interested in setting the Soldier on fire when he’s done as any thaw cycle, too.

He’s too deep in his head to catch more than the tail end of her next instruction, and he gives himself a mental shove off a cliff for the error. He deserves that. He can think about his failures later, when it won’t be wasting her time.

Because she has such a warm disposition, she repeats herself, stressing once again the need to maintain a whole circle of pastry during the process of putting it in the round flat-bottomed bowl, without any holes, tears, or breaks. Without even any thin spots, or it could leak—apparently a terrible thing for pies to do.

Uniform, then. Precise. He is good at those things. This is another chance to crawl back from having warranted the backhand-praise just now over the tea. A chance to at least resume a balance of success and failure. He might be allowed to put the club away without any further contact with it if he can “line the plate” with enough care.

He’s definitely going to try.

And he thinks he might be doing well enough, based on the return of her giggle—probably a good sign where her equilibrium is concerned, since it’s such a consistent element to her shape—even though it is a more subdued giggle than her previous samples.

Then she goes and reverses the rules of pastry.

“Now, in the drawer just to the side of the measuring cups, there are the pastry cutters my Vovochka made for me.” There’s the flush at her cheeks again, with as little logical cause as ever.

He looks in the drawer. It’s the jumble of metal shapes, just as he remembered. Apparently the sweet tooth handler has a hobby? Making… He searches for a charitable description for a moment, and comes up empty. Making these. “Pastry cutters.” It’s an ominous name for an object, given the emphasis on not damaging the pastry.

The wife with the warm disposition has continued speaking, though, and he shifts his attention back to her.

“—think we should have a leaf shape for this pie.” She beams at him, an incendiary but pleasant sort of warmth that fits her disposition well. “You’ll just punch out a few on the top—five of them, I think. There’s five of us.”

_What._

He has obviously heard her wrong. He missed whatever she was saying while he was trying not to insult the sweet tooth handler’s metalwork. This warrants clarification, and he wastes no time in seeking it this time around.

“That would be poking holes in the pastry.” Damnit. _Tone of voice, Soldier. Do better._

She either doesn’t hear the exasperation or doesn’t mind it. Because there’s the warm smile from before. The extra bit of light in her eyes. “Yes,” she says as though this is a good thing, “but it’s a top crust.” She takes in a breath before launching another chatter session. “See, we need…”

She has more to say than that, but he is not listening.

This is worse than smashing the fucking butter and flour together on a rock after sifting the whole goddamn pile to keep it fluffy and delicate like the spoiled little princess it is. He put a lot of effort—and no small amount of fear—into making _damn_ sure his stupid little pastry circles had no _holes_ in them. No _tears_ in them. No _breaks_ at their edges.

And he won. There were no holes or tears or breaks in the edges. She said so. That was a success, even if it _was_ also a failure because he was supposed to ruin it and didn’t. She _told_ him so. Verbally. With her mouth. She said “good job, Soldier.” He heard her. Loud and clear and like a slap across the face.

And _now_ he is supposed to poke a bunch of fucking holes in it? _Why?_  Why would this—

…Why is pie so _fucking horrible?!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.


	15. First Impressions | Soldat: A baby’s worth of crackers

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

The next inspection is unavoidable, even if the wife with the warm disposition doesn’t verbally request it. He has cut the leaves out—punched _holes_ in his fucking pastry! on purpose, no less—and been as precise as possible with the rest of it in an effort to finish on a strong note. Sometimes if a mission concludes with enough success, things that go wrong in the middle are overlooked when it’s time to debrief.

So there it is. His attempt at a blueberry pie. Every instruction followed, even the stupid ones. The oven is on, so he knows that’s a step. Possibly the final step. Maybe… Maybe that is both the next step and the final one, and he can flee once that is accomplished. Maybe the fallout of this particular mistake of his is nearly over.

So that he can find the next bad decision, and make that one, too.

Except putting something in the oven means pulling it back out again later. This isn’t the crematorium, no bodies in cardboard boxes here—people are planning to eat this monstrosity. He might have to stay in the kitchen until it is the right amount of burned in the oven that they will want to eat it.

Problem: How the hell is he supposed to know when a pie is burned enough to be eaten? Except that she will tell him, surely. That is her job on this op. On to the next concern: If he is in the kitchen when the pie is sufficiently burned, _will he have to eat it._ Blueberries were a cinch to sneak out of sight when they were fresh and clean. He doesn’t see a clear escape from blueberries that have become a pie, though.

Maybe the reprimand for all his failures so far is a piece of this pie he has created. That would be incredibly poetic. Horrible, but poetic. Almost beautifully so. All of his failures, all of his mistakes, all of his flaws, turned into a pie by his very own hands and shoved at him with a warm smile and the order, “Eat.”

“Crimping a pie crust takes a delicate touch, erm, Soldier.” And there is a sigh that is not like the ones from before. That is a sigh that says fed-up, that says now-what, that says dissatisfaction.

Crimping is delicate, she says. Has he… crimped it wrong? He was not told to crimp anything, and he doesn’t think he _has_ crimped anything, but here is the wife with the warm disposition waving at a stool and correcting a crimping technique he has not even attempted yet.

Talk about predetermined failure. He’s fucking doomed. This is what he gets for staying in the kitchen.

The obvious strategy in a situation that has been preemptively declared a failure is to do everything as perfectly as possible, on the off-chance that the reward for temporary perfection is forgiveness for the failure he has not yet demonstrated. He will pay excellent attention.

No more letting her chatter wash over him like a tide of information he can afford to wade through later. No more loose arms, even if the Arm doesn’t like being twisted behind his back like this and one of the servos in his shoulder pitches a silent, painful fit about it. And his crimping? He has already failed it, but he will do it perfectly.

Once she tells him how.

Her deep breath could indicate satisfaction with the compliant pose, or disappointment that he is determined to succeed going forward when she’s assigned him a failing role, or even just the opening to a truly lengthy bit of chatter. He’s actually leaning toward the third option. The wife with the warm disposition does not always seem to realize that she is talking when she speaks.

And she seems exceptionally focused on deer as the operation progresses. Preoccupied with them, even. Given the increasing rate of flushed cheeks and darting eyes when she mumbles about them, they make her nervous.

And deer? Are not worth being nervous about. They are curious and soft and gentle, but also flighty little cowards. Deer are not at all interested in causing trouble. _Moose_ are worth being nervous about. Elk, maybe, if it’s a snowy winter drive up a mountain around dusk. But deer? Psh.

“First, we lift the edges up a little.” Well she’s calm about it, at least. Despite mumbling about deer under her breath.

And her fingers do indeed lift up the edges of the pastry. She’s gentle about it, but not timid. She assumes the pastry will behave, and it does so, possibly out of concern for the consequences of misbehavior. He knows what that’s like. The wife with the warm disposition has probably never met a challenging pastry in her life. Or if she has, she’s warmly conscripted it into her service. He knows what _that’s_ like, too.

“Then,” she says, “we’re going to tuck the top under the bottom, like so.”

And then she does a little flip with her fingers to roll the top pastry under the bottom pastry, and yes, that seems doable when it’s her fingers doing it. Not even a little difficult. The pastry even cooperates like it hasn’t been a willful brat this whole time. Pastry definitely senses motherhood and responds well to it. It’s made out of all that delicate princess flour, after all.

Her fingers are still, then, resting on the folded over bit of pastry, and there’s a little pause, just a whisper of hesitation that’s only noticeable because he’s been paying too much attention and is attuned to the hesitation of others. And he knows that he is paying too much attention—she almost indirectly scolded him for it with the “good job, Soldier”—but he _has_ to pay close attention or he’ll fail crimping. He would rather crimp properly and fail for being too attentive than the reverse.

Then she’s looking up at him with huge, startled eyes, like she hasn’t known he was standing right there and he’s come from out of nowhere—and he hasn’t. He _hasn’t._ He’s done nothing surprising or sudden or sneaky. He’s been so obvious, and she should not be surprised or startled or overwhelmed in any way. She should also not be flushing brighter red than at any point prior. Both darker, and further down her face, even onto her neck.

It’s an alarming shift, almost like the allergic reaction a field agent had a few years ago after biting into a cookie he’d swiped off the counter during an op in a bakery, and they all thought he’d been cunningly poisoned, except that lab work on both the agent and the cookie later revealed it was just a stray peanut.

And hadn’t that just confirmed his opinion about cookies, though no one had actually asked his opinion and he had known better than to offer it, even after the fool had died. Especially after the fool had died. It had served him right, though. The mission objective was to raid an adjacent cellar and retrieve project files, maybe kill the thief if she was still on the premises, not to steal from the shop owner. Eye on the ball, idiot.

Regardless, the wife with the warm disposition doesn’t swell up at all, and she’s breathing fine. And that pastry has nothing in it that she hasn’t directed him to put in it, and she’d know if she were going to be ill from working with it. She is an expert on the subject of pie. So, not an allergic reaction.

Which is good. Because he doesn’t have a solution to that kind of problem.

Eventually, she looks back down at the pie, and her fingers are not steady any longer. Now they are twitchy, and that occasional hint of a stutter is back in full force. “A-and then we’re… W-we just— And then we— We—”

She shakes all over once, the shudder people make when they encounter something unpleasant or disgusting, a socked foot in an unexpected cold puddle. Then she engages in more needless throat-clearing, tosses back her tea with her eyes tightly shut, and takes another deep breath that’s not as smooth as it could be. It’s… an attempt at self-calming behavior? Attempt, because it’s not working that he can see.

It’s nothing like his own attempts in that direction, but he wouldn’t expect it to be. She is a person, and will have people-style mannerisms and behavioral coping strategies. Nevertheless, it’s clear that she needs more practice in this area. He can’t be sure what her baseline is because he’s never seen her not on edge about something—maybe him?—but she’s not calm, no matter how much effort she applies.

If anything, her movements become shakier as she works her fingers under another bit of pastry and does another flip-and-fold maneuver. The pastry complies, as he had known it would. The success, he can see at the edge of his vision, does nothing to calm her down, to reduce the redness spreading down her neck and across her clavicles, to ease some of the tremors.

But of course she wouldn’t be concerned about failure. That’s really more his area of expertise. Hers is pie.

He splits his attention—far easier than handlers or support teams ever seem to think it is if their distress at his “lack of attention to a target” is any indication—and devotes his external perception to monitoring the crimping procedure. He will not fail in his plan to crimp perfectly so as to possibly wipe out some of his previous mistakes. He doesn’t think for a moment that he could erase them all, but he will finish this with at least one success.

Internally, he pours over the relevant data he has on the condition of the wife with the warm disposition. Flushed with exertion—no. That’s skipping ahead. Unsteady gait, bit of a wobble to the hips that’s probably a result of altered balance due to the presence of the baby. Shifted center of mass, overcompensation for the same. Terrible shoes a contributing factor. Time spent active in the forest another contributing factor.

And also the next relevant data point. Hours. Given the motion of the trees and the wind speed experienced on average while ferrying supplies and paperwork, assuming a certain amount of shielding from the wind by the forest around her, the state of her hair combined with the contents and amount of contents in her basket supports the estimate.

When did she last eat? People need to do that. She needs to eat more than others. Enough for that baby, too. She ate the crunchy sweet things he’d put down with the first pot of tea, and jam in the tea. That was… how many calories… He hadn’t cared. It hadn’t mattered, then. Now it matters. Fuck.

The wife with the warm disposition, with her shaky, trembling fingers, squishes the rolled over pastry bits into a seal that, yes, looks like it would be called a crimp. How about that. A piece of culinary vocabulary that is straightforward, means exactly what it ought to mean. She’s been gentle with the squish, just lightly shaping the pastry without mashing at it. Light touch, fingertip into fingertips.

So it’ll be lift, roll, gently squish, repeat. All the way around. He appreciates crimping. He has not done it yet, but he can tell that this will not be like the zest or the pointless runt spatula or the messy flour-misting sifter or the pie rock. As a word that can be applied to pastry, “crimping” makes much more sense than “rubbing” did. The word is actually appropriate, matches the action.

He grants it his approval, which is meaningless for a new set of reasons. Usually his approval is meaningless because it’s in relation to people who are in no way in need of his approval and who he has no right to either approve or disapprove of, though see if that ever stops him. This time, it’s pastry and things-done-to-pastry. It’s just pointless to bother with approval, but he goes ahead and does it anyway. No one will know.

Except the General, later. He’ll be able to tell somehow. He always is. But the General usually permits him his private approval and disapproval. As long as he doesn’t presume to think his uninvited opinions mean anything. They are a gift that can be taken away if he fails to be responsible with it. Requested assessments are one thing. Opinions, another.

So crimping has approval. Great. He waits to see if there is more to the process, something that will ruin crimping, but she slides the pie away from herself with a high-pitched “like that,” and then tries to hide her hands. It might be more successful if she weren’t massively swollen with that baby and if she didn’t telegraph the action like shouting “watch this.”

So there is nothing more to crimping. But there is something terribly wrong all the same. She should not have consumed just the crunchy sweet tea things. This is the time people eat, and while observing crimping, he’s managed a rough estimate of caloric intake the wife with the warm disposition has likely been able to manage so far today. Crunchy sweet tea things plus a few spoons of jam do not contain sufficient calories, even if she ate a lot before setting out to bring back pie things and mushrooms.

And she couldn’t have eaten a lot. Not with a baby in there. The baby is probably a confounding factor in and of itself. She’s managing to drink plenty of fluids—excellent—but there might not be much room for solids alongside a baby. She’s already massive with just the baby. Where would she have _put_ a large meal this morning?

The wife with the warm disposition looks up, seems upset. Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she be? He notes the assortment of physical indications of distress she displays. Yes. She is right to be upset with him. He deserves that. She doesn’t, though. She deserves better.

Not much room for solids, and… And all the fluids are tea. Entirely tea. He knows that people like that, that they have the stupid notion that tea solves problems, when really it is just a liquid accompanied by crunchy sweet things and, more often than not, conversation that seems to be enjoyable for the participants when he does listen in on it.

One thing he has noticed tea has a tendency to do, in addition to making people think their problems have been lessened, is give people more energy. Temporarily, and of a nervous sort instead of anything that would actually be sustainable. Rabbit energy. Jumpy-flighty-fidgety energy. Like shaking hands on fucking pastry when there is no logical non-chemical reason for the trembling.

So. Insufficient caloric intake—because he only put down crunchy sweet things with the first pot of tea. Over-consumption of tea—tea he fucking provided, of course, like the failure-prone moron he is. And a baby that means she probably needs more to eat and maybe some fresh water to drink, even if the above two points weren’t factors. Which they are.

He can’t undo what has already happened, but he mitigate the disaster a little. Step one—take the fucking tea away. If it’s a toss-up between being rude and presumptuous and overstepping the bounds of compliance on the one hand and allowing the wife with the warm disposition to continue over-consuming tea on the other, he’ll take the beating for rudeness any day. The club’s already out, so it’s just a matter of time, anyway.

The tea is easily removed—good, simple. He likes that. She doesn’t say a word—he doesn’t know whether that falls into the good or bad category. When in doubt, it’s bad. But that’s already the case, so there’s no additional harm in it.

Caloric intake alone would indicate some of the chocolate in the cupboards. Chocolate is not friendly to distressed stomachs. If he had to eat something out of this kitchen, was ordered, “Eat,” he would pick the crackers with the sesame seeds. Each cracker is a distinct object, so she can eat them slowly, can take breaks between crackers when there’s no more room because of the baby smooshing everything out of the way.

And he could probably hold out half an hour before bringing the crackers back up if he had to eat a few. That’s a good sign. And a good rule of thumb. If _he_ can manage to keep them down for that long, any _person_ would be able to, surely.

Step two then—refreshed cool cloth, glass of water, crackers with sesame seeds… How many crackers? Too many and she might feel she had to eat more than she was comfortable eating… though, really, how much is a person comfortable eating? He can’t judge that very well, since he’s never comfortable eating any amount of anything… But too few and she might feel like he was withholding things that were her right to have and to consume…

In the end, he doesn’t have time to play a full round of “how many ways can I fuck this up” against himself, so he just estimates what a baby might require on the calorie front, being much smaller than a grown person. If he’s wrong, he’s wrong. Not the first time. Not the last.

Last time, she required him to show his work, to explain what the purpose of the cloth was, the intended consequence of applying it. He knows what to do when setting things down this time without having to wait for direction.

“You should eat something to maintain your blood sugar.” There. Not a command. He has no right to command her. It is not his place in any way. But a suggestion… he’s allowed to suggest things, sometimes, with some handlers. Not always. And certainly not with all handlers. But she wanted an explanation earlier, so he can only hope that she does so now as well.

And just to be safe—like that’s ever under his control—he adds an apology. Might as well give that an attempt. The General appreciates it when he announces failures, owns them, presents them to be reprimanded and corrected. She might appreciate it, too. And it’s true, anyway. “I should have realized earlier. I’m sorry.”

The apology is not accepted, but it’s also not rejected. It hangs in the air between them while she decides what to do with it. He carefully maintains baseline heart rate. The wife with the warm disposition is agitated enough for them both.

And while he should be the one agitated in this situation, many handlers experience relief when he is calm. Or when he acts calm, anyway. She might benefit from his remaining externally at ease, from demonstrating his intention to accept whatever she decides he should accept.

“…What?”

She is skilled, that’s for sure. Untrained, unpracticed, but still entirely capable of throwing him off balance with a word. A handler should know what. A handler is the source of—

She is not a handler, he reminds himself. She is a handler’s wife. It occurs to him with a wave of queasy dread that _he_ is the expert in the room when it comes to how this should play out.

Okay. He can do that. He can be an expert. He’s… qualified. Sort of. Just from the other side of the equation. And he mastered the club from the other side, from the handler side. He can do this, too. He… is not supposed to tell handlers what to do except in very specific circumstances in the field. But she is not a handler. And maybe… it’s more like… guiding her, and less like instructing her.

“Is…” And shit, he’s fucking that up right off the bat. Eye contact is a big “no” in this situation. He looks away. “…that not a baby’s worth of crackers?”

Ask for clarification. That is one of the options when there is a misunderstanding on his part. He’s just showing her that she can clarify if she needs to. Except it’s really more asking her to clarify, and that’s less showing her an option and more exercising the option. Second fuck-up. _Bravo, Soldier._

He puts the rest of the crackers on the table. It might be too many. It might still not be enough. He has no way to tell without asking, and no idea how to walk a handler’s wife through the process of assuming a role of authority. If that’s even what he’s supposed to be doing. Maybe he’s supposed to be crimping the fucking pie. Maybe he’s supposed to be begging the General for help by now. Maybe he’s demonstrating stubbornness by not already doing that. Maybe he’s just supposed to shut the hell up already. Maybe—

“Here.” That’s too abrupt, too direct, too toneless. He shouldn’t be speaking at all, not without being asked to speak, or told to speak, or ordered to speak. But he’s spoken, and it was fucking rude the way he did it. He should elaborate to make it less rude, should say more. “There’s more.” _Really, Soldier? That’s what comes out? What a moron._

“What?”

Yes. Exactly. He’s impressed, too. That’s genius-level conversation, right there. _Good job._

But it’s not his place to silently agree with her on the matter of his utter idiocy. He should instead try to salvage what he can. The wife with the warm disposition seems uncomfortable with reprimands, and even though this just means she should have more opportunity to practice them, he has the feeling he should help her avoid them, even if he deserves a few.

Further explanation might do it. Showing more of his work. “That is the most easily digestible item in your pantry.” A fact. They started off with facts. Facts are safe. She appreciates facts. “If you pick the seeds off.” Another fact. The seed parts are not as easy on the stomach as the cracker parts. But the seeds are where a lot of the calories are, and they’re pretty dense with them, on the whole.

He risks a glance and then resumes avoiding her eyes. She is still terribly confused, but not as flushed, and a little less shaky. Marginal success. Her eyes are still too wide, and a confused handler—handler’s wife—is not the intended goal. That, and she really ought to have the seeds. “But you should eat the seeds,” he says, knowing it’s a suggestion that goes too far, that crosses a line. “For the protein.” Show his work?

Before he has the opportunity to add another wrong decision to his impressive collection, the Soldier swipes the pie with its uncrimped border and retreats to the counter. Time for a recap, while he flips and folds and gently squeezes and engages in a bit of good old-fashioned self-hatred.

Sub-objective: maintain composure while calming and reassuring the wife with the warm disposition. Failed.

Sub-objective: guide the wife with the warm disposition as she acclimates to handler-style interactions. Failed.

Sub-objective: explain his thought process to the wife with the warm disposition in an effort to show his work. Failed.

Sub-objective: use appropriate suggestion-not-order language with the wife with the warm disposition while being polite. Failed.

Sub-objective: properly apologize for failing to realize and prevent the source of distress to the wife with the warm disposition before it had caused distress. Failed.

So much for finishing on a strong note. At least the crimping looks okay. It’s a thing that can be done precisely, physically, without incorporating much by way of decision-making. He’d be ruthlessly disappointed in himself if he fucked that up. She should be, too, though he probably won’t have an opportunity to know for sure, because the outside of this pie—aside from the gaping holes in the top—looks very neat and tidy.

She hasn’t said that pie should be neat or tidy. Not in so many words. But everything about it has been a combination of needlessly fiddly and bizarrely _laissez-faire_. The result seems like it should be at least a little neat and tidy.

And the wife with the warm disposition is making use of the crackers and the rag. Is drinking the water. Is still confused, and moving more slowly and smoothly than before. Is deep in thought. That’s… probably good. That will give her the opportunity to decide what she wants to happen next. Because it really is up to her in every case but one, and the General is not interfering, so that last possibility is not likely to come to pass.

Apparently, her thinking is not accompanied by much other activity, as she is too preoccupied with that and the crackers—and they are disappearing fast; that is not enough of them and there is nothing he can do about that without drawing attention to his failure to provide the right amount—to do more than dictate where in the oven the pie belongs and for how long. He knew he could count on her for that. She knows that much about her role in the operation, no matter how much of the rest is up in the air.

She doesn’t seem interested in giving him any further instructions, but she also doesn’t seem to have dismissed him in any fashion. He can stand here for 40 minutes. He can stand here for days, if that’s what he’s supposed to do… though it seems like an unnecessary risk to stand _here_ for that long, _in this kitchen_ for that long.

He is ready to stand, still and silent, for however long he needs to, but after a few minutes, the combination of but-she-hasn’t-told-him-to and his knowledge of a tornado drawer full of measuring cups sends him back to work. She hasn’t told him to be still, and she hasn’t told him not to organize anything. And he’s already been planning to organize this drawer later tonight.

No time like the present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.


	16. First Impressions | Vladimir: The things she does not know

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

Vladimir avoids his father’s gaze as Polina finishes her whirlwind impression—a flurry of fingernails trailing lightly against his chest and then along his scalp, teeth nibbling at his lower lip, and then gone as suddenly as she arrived, before he even finishes losing his breath, let alone catches it again—disappearing back into the kitchen to resume the trial by pastry that could get them all killed. Fearless as ever, headstrong as ever, an outright force of nature.

He’s never been so willingly caught up in anything as he was caught up in her at first sight, nor so eagerly kept on the hook. And now _she’s_ caught up in _this_. Pretty poor repayment, all told, though his Polinochka would never see it that way. She _would_ see it that way, if she knew.

If he’d had his druthers, she’d be sitting at the table now, coloring with their son and drinking a good deal less tea, and not trying to coach the unpredictably violent Soldier through remedial pastry classes. Hell, if it was up to him, the Soldier would be on ice. But even if his father would permit this doomed experiment to be sidelined—which he won’t—his Polinochka would never hear of it now that she’s had a taste. She’s only been waiting years for such an opportunity.

For the Soldier to be available to her now, in any form, but particular in the flesh? That is an actual, recurring, dream of hers come true. If the Soldier were sent back to Perm, or even just anywhere other than this dacha, when she’s only just met him? It would be far, far safer, but she would be more than a little put out. And just try telling her about the danger as a means to warn her off. She sees danger as a perk, and he can hardly fault her for that now, when it’s likely half the reason she fell in love with him. Maybe more than half.

“Feeling better?”

And there’s the arched eyebrow to go with that low tone and its audible smirk. Vladimir can see it from the corner of his eye, and even if he couldn’t, this question in that tone is irritatingly familiar. “Feeling better?” is his father’s way of snidely proving a point, or of emphasizing the futility of whatever situation by asking _without asking_ whether anything has been improved by whatever has just happened. The answer is always “no.” And it’s “no” now, too. If anything, the blithe lack of danger sense his better half just demonstrated makes the situation worse.

Which his father knows, or he wouldn’t be “asking” his question. His father is clearly enjoying this latest round of discomfort over the prospect of his wife being drawn to danger—of her possibly reaching out to touch the fire and get burned. He’s probably enjoying this new round even more than he’s been enjoying Vladimir’s  _entirety legitimate_ concern about the impending disaster on the whole.

Vladimir supposes he should at least count himself lucky that his father doesn’t mind being witness to Polina’s affectionate demonstrations; it’d be difficult to welcome her into the family if he did. She’s demonstrative, to say the least, with no impulse to seek privacy even out in the country where there’s actually room for privacy. She has always has been like that, has always struggled to be circumspect about her affections, from their first—no, their second—encounter.

Their first meeting was very professional, even if he hadn’t needed the shirt he’d bought from her, and hadn’t actually paid attention to the sizing when selecting it. It had just been the first thing that came to hand on his way to her counter. He hadn’t said a single improper word, and she’d only blushed enough for him to come back every day for over a month, buying up all sorts of things he had no use for just to get the chance to flirt with her across a cash register until her father’s scowl threatened to take over his entire face and it was time to collect whatever random thing he had purchased and leave.

 _His_ father has probably never flirted in his life, let alone in public.

It’s not a dislike for the behavior. His father’s never said anything derisive about it, or frowned at it, or disallowed it, and not just because of the difficulty in finding secluded corners in the city. It’s more that his father doesn’t seem to care about flirtation one way or the other, except in that it makes for good opportunities to dig at other people and read what they don’t want read. Public displays of affection distract people, allowing for insights that would otherwise be unavailable. To him, they’re a tactic more than anything, neither good nor bad, save what they’re used for.

This may or may not be his reason for avoiding them. Vladimir could take a guess, but he has no way of checking the accuracy of said guess. Certainly he’s never seen his father engaging in any sort of romantically affectionate display, at home or elsewhere. Probably just another of the many reasons Mother is the way she is. Whatever drew her to his father was not romantic charm.

“No,” he answers shortly, keeping his eyes trained on the progress his son’s crayon makes across the page.

The boy has been so focused on his artwork after waking up that he hadn’t even looked up to grin at his mother as she breezed through. He’s drawing what might look to most like a green scribble inside a blue scribble. Vladimir knows it to be a fish inside the stream that winds its way through the woods out behind the dacha. All fish are green, after all.

Vasily has been borderline obsessed with fish since Vladimir brought a trio of them back from the woods two weeks ago for dinner. He’d enjoyed moving their eyes around with his fingers, and wagging their tails like they were still flopping around. He’d also enjoyed moving their mouths open and closed until he’d gotten himself “bitten” by a very dead fish whose teeth were still sharp, and then fish were mean and he very tearfully didn’t want to eat them.

He does, however, clearly still like drawing them. This is the fifth “fish in a stream” he’s drawn today, emboldened by his grandfather’s keen interest. If the man isn’t careful, he’s going to end up taking his grandson fishing this week, and lots of luck to him if he plans to catch anything. It would serve him right for insisting on this unnecessarily dangerous shadow op, except Vladimir suspects his father would enjoy that time spent with Vasily as much as _he_ does.

The last time Vladimir had tried taking his son to the wider part of that stream where the fish liked to congregate—just this last Thursday—he’d spent more time trying to prevent the boy from eating moss off the rocks than he had actually fishing, and he wouldn’t have caught a single thing anyway, because Vasily had wanted to feed the fish so bad he’d upended the bait bucket into the water.

In Vasily’s mind, at least, the bucket had made for a much better hat than it did holder of worms, even if it was a tight fit, and Vasily had insisted on wearing it jammed down over his head the entire way back—tripping over half-seen rocks and smacking into tree trunks, and eventually demanding to be carried back, bucket still down over his head because he was “a fish knight.”

It had been a pleasant afternoon, all told, and he’d found Vasily’s antics to be far more entertaining than frustrating. His father probably would, too. Vladimir has fond memories of making slime torches by swirling sticks in the foamy algae near the grassier bit of the bank where the water was still enough for thick floating sheets of the frothy aquatic greenery to build up, and then marching through the woods holding it up so that everyone could see the way back—Father and Dyusha gamely pretending he was lighting the path while Pasha muttered behind them.

Then Mother had come to live with them, and there were no more fishing trips with his father and brothers. Mother wanted too much work done around the dacha to allow for whole afternoons out in the woods, and then the baby came, and Father threw himself back into his work. Probably to avoid Mother, though he never said any such thing.

Only Dyusha, some ten years older, would go out to the stream with him after their father remarried. Pasha had never wanted anything to do with nature unless Father had dragged him out into it—to “build character,” which clearly failed to happen, if his scandal-studded career is any indication—and even then, his charm couldn’t quite hide his sullen disgust at every leaf and bug he encountered. So it was hardly a surprise when he opted to stay at the dacha with Mother those summers and hone his lying abilities. Not everyone could avoid her, or even wanted to.

His own son will not be experiencing the sudden loss of quality nature time with his father. Not if Vladimir has a say in it, which he does. Of course, that depends on there being a minimum of violence during this week. He will not have much of a say in it if he—or worse, his wife—ends up among the casualty list that follows the Soldier around growing ever-longer.

Damn his father. _Is he feeling better._ Fuck him. Not every Karpov has a death wish.

He won’t give his father the satisfaction of eye contact. “I’d ‘feel better’ if you drove the Soldier back to Perm and left him there.”

And now he feels like a sulking brat one third his age, which is almost certainly exactly the way his father intends for him to feel. But it’s not Mother in that kitchen, with her extensive knowledge of the Soldier’s behavior and her willingness—eagerness might be more accurate—to inflict damage if crossed. Or if not crossed. She’ll find a reason to do whatever she wants to do.

It’s not her, though. It’s Polina. His Polinochka won’t step on spiders or swat flies, but just herds them back outdoors with her sunny smile and a bit of newspaper. If the Soldier gets out of line, she’s not going to put him back in line. She’s going to try shooing him into a better place like an over-affectionate school teacher, and then Vladimir will have to clean blood off the ceiling while planning a funeral and mourning the loss of the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

And how can the Soldier stay in line when he doesn’t know where the lines are? Vladimir isn’t deaf. He’s heard the Soldier lose the plot at least five times in that kitchen so far, and even without seeing the desperate mental backpedaling and reassessment going on behind the Soldier’s eyes, it’s nerve-wracking waiting for him to pull himself out of the tailspin each time. It’s a miracle the Soldier’s even still in that kitchen and not lost somewhere in his head and wound tight enough to snap at a wrong tone of voice.

So on the one hand, Vladimir will admit that this has not been a complete disaster yet.

On the other hand, the operative word is “yet.”

It’s still day one. There’s a lot of room for things to go wrong.

Vladimir can’t even see the Soldier from here, but he can feel the confusion—and worse, the mounting frustration—radiating off him. It’s in the pauses between instruction and action—the Soldier does not pause when there is a clear opportunity to comply. It’s in the tone of his voice—which the Soldier has thankfully never been able to fully control and which can therefore serve as an early warning system to anyone who knows what to listen for. It’s in the fact that Vladimir has been able to hear measuring cups and baking spatulas clacking together—instead of the preternatural silence that should be accompanying the Soldier’s every movement.

It’s in the Arm.

That many calibration loops in this amount of time? There’s either a gear out of place—or some other inside bit of machinery—or the Soldier is losing his damn mind in that kitchen. It almost doesn’t matter which it is. If the Soldier doesn’t have control over that thing due to a mechanical malfunction, he’s likely to crush something even if he’s mentally stable. As much as that phrase has ever applied to him.

Vladimir will grant that the instructions he included in the briefing he would now like to go back and do over did not include “don’t give him orders or otherwise assume a position of authority.” But still. Telling the Soldier to bake a pie for her? What was she thinking? That’s not exactly “avoid lingering in his presence,” is it?

Of course, she doesn’t know what happens to handlers who are authority figures by rank and title and action, but who are _not_ in complete control of the situation. Those times when the Soldier sees an opening and slides right in there with a crunch of bone and cut off screaming. They train on average three new handlers a year, either base handlers or field handlers. The number of total handlers on the project roster does not go up year-to-year. Some years it even drops.

And that doesn’t include the support staff or trainers or field agents. It is an actual full-time staff position to locate and bring in new recruits and to arrange an assortment of cover stories and funeral services for project members either too injured or too dead to continue working.

But he’s never told her that.

Why should he give her a reason to worry? Why should he recount every surgeon or researcher crippled by an under-medicated outburst, every trainer or handler killed outright for being careless or just because the Soldier’s having a hard time remembering where he is that day? Why should he list off each and every mangled hand or severed finger or meaty chunk taken out of a forearm?

Why should he tell her about that one guy’s face? About how they’d all used him as an object lesson for the rest of the year: This is why you don’t lean forward to get a closer look.

It’s not that the Soldier is always like that, or even usually like that. And it’s true that a lot of incidents on base are primarily caused by idiots who neglect to follow protocol or who stupidly think they have more power over the Soldier than they do. Idiots who see people like Sasha get away with something and then try it themselves. But while the Soldier might not explode often, the potential is always there, and the numbers add up over the years. Even Sasha’s going to get burned someday. Vladimir’s not planning to have any sympathy for him.

And that’s to say nothing of field work. If the field itself doesn’t get you out there, the Soldier might. It’s less likely than on base—accidents happen close to home, after all—but field work carries certain risks even aside from the Soldier losing his tenuous grip on reality. Risk of enemy fire, risk of friendly fire, risk from the elements… Risk of witnessing the Soldier rip open children’s bodies and tear humans of all ages into fleshy chunks.

And his beloved wife just doesn’t need to worry about all that. Or _didn’t_ need to worry about it.

Let her salivate over the thought of a base full of attractive men in uniform, firing endlessly into targets on a range and doing calisthenics and hand-to-hand sparring all day long. Let her continue to think of “the field” as some magical, rugged landscape with plenty of cover and clear-cut defining lines between good and bad, right and wrong. Let her dream of positive—and probably provocative—things when she imagines what it’s like out there, and not have red-stained nightmares like his.

She’s told him about some of her dreams. They’re wildly unrealistic and terribly romantic, filled with smoke that obscures one’s vision without stinging one’s eyes and lengthy dives to the bottom of lakes and ponds of all sorts that leave one breathless and dripping but never drowned. It’s all spying on the enemy, or confronting the enemy, or ambushing the enemy… and she has no idea that “the enemy” could be their neighbors just as easily as some American business tycoon or nuclear physicist.

He knows that on some level she _does_ know about enemies at home. It’s impossible to live life without knowing how easily someone can be accused and snatched off the street. But deep down, he knows, his Polinochka considers most of those accusations to be false (because people are good, not guilty), and entertains some kind-hearted delusion that most of those innocents get returned to the streets after the misunderstanding is cleared up (which is worse than laughable, because people who are wrongly disappeared are just as badly damaged by the process as the actual traitors, and would hardly survive long even if they were released).

Her logic seems to be that the KGB is terrible and terribly frightening _as an organization,_ certainly, but that on a _personnel_ level, well, an organization might be horrible and still be staffed by people who are inherently good, and since her husband is mixed up in all that, it can’t really be as bad as it sounds. And looks. And is generally understood by the public to be.

As though he somehow makes the blood go away, and isn’t spilling it himself by the bucket in windowless concrete rooms filled with screams. And in all fairness, he doesn’t do much of that these days, so she’s only mostly wrong about the KGB, and not entirely wrong. There are some branches whose windowless concrete rooms are nearly scream-free, even, or at least they were, when he worked with those branches before he transferred over to the Winter Soldier project. Security being what it is, he hasn’t exactly kept up with them.

And yes, maybe he inadvertently helps her inaccurate impression gain ground by bringing her textiles and similar whenever an op takes him abroad. But he can’t honestly be expected to walk past a fabric store in Sweden and not go back after the mission objective is met to buy her several yards of something in a nice floral he knows she’ll appreciate. It’s not like it goes unused. And he pays for it—during business hours, no less. Not like that idiot who swiped a peanut butter cookie a few years back.

She doesn’t know about that, though.

Doesn’t know that while agent whatever his name was had been swelling up and suffocating around that cookie, the rest of them had stayed on schedule and on target. They’d gone back for him after clearing the bakery and emptying the hidden cellar next door of contraband, political pamphlets and stolen project notes, but that was mostly to avoid leaving behind evidence of exactly who had conducted the raid.

KGB on the scene? Fine, shout it from the rooftops—that’s good cover. Department X? Barely a whisper. As it should be. The Winter Soldier project? Was never there to be whispered about.

And she has no idea just how many rooftops he is intimately familiar with after a decade in the field with the Soldier. She doesn’t know that most of the time, the closest they get to the nameless, faceless enemy she conjures up for them is not terribly close at all. That it’s only a fair fight if something’s gone wrong. Hell, it’s only a fight at all if something’s gone wrong. It’s less combating the enemy and more exploding the enemy’s head from half a mile out, often before they’re an active enemy. When they are the whispered potential of an enemy.

And not just the enemy.

She doesn’t know about the airplanes. The hotels. The buses. The scores of innocents who are not involved with or even aware of what’s happening around them before the fireball comes barreling down the fuselage to engulf them at cruising altitude, or the hotel windows all implode and shower them with glass shards just as the walls come crashing down on them, or the bus is launched skyward by a remotely detonated shaped charge.

She doesn’t know about Cambodia.

She doesn’t know these things because he has never told her.

Because he blindly—stupidly—thought his father might leave her out of this. Might leave their son out of it. But has he ever known his father to leave a tool lying in the field? No. Has he ever known his father not to make use of everything available and many things that aren’t? No. Has he ever seen his father so much as hesitate to send a message or order a mission due to there being civilian casualties as a result? No.

Why should he have thought his family would escape? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why would the man leave his grandson out of it when he hasn’t left his sons out of it?

Oh, but he’s just worrying too much. Thanks, Father.

Worrying as much as he does is why he’s alive, with all his limbs intact and fingers in place. If he didn’t have such a keen eye for what can go wrong, he wouldn’t be able to see those things and keep them out of the way so that the Soldier doesn’t get derailed mid-op and start picking their own men off just because one of them started muttering about order and pain, and he can’t be sure which of them it was, so they should all go out in a burst of bone and blood and brain splatter. Fucking HYDRA. The least circumspect secret organization in existence. How they haven’t figured out by now that the Soldier goes spastically violent around them is beyond him.

Vladimir sighs and gives his knuckles another crack. He has somehow never realized before today just how long it takes to make a pie. Or bake it once it’s made. From the sounds of it, she’s got him chopping vegetables now. At least cutting things is a skill the Soldier is confident in. It might calm him down a little. Maybe even a lot. Hopefully a lot.

He’s not sure if he’d prefer there be a mini-catastrophe—nothing injurious—early this week so that his Father might be willing to reconfigure his plan and remove the Soldier from the scene before others begin arriving, or if he’d prefer for everything to go as smoothly as possible for as long as possible. The former would be terrible. But the latter could be far worse when they hit the inevitable bump in the road and it’s had time to grow into a land mine.

His Polinochka deserves better than a land mine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.
> 
> Pavel Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s oldest still-living son; a successful politician with a trend toward scandal and a temper. Also called Pasha, Pashenka, Pashka (rudely). The Soldier mostly thinks of him as the older politician. 
> 
> Andrei Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s first son. KIA during WWII at the age of 28. Often fondly remembered as Dyusha.


	17. First Impressions | Polina: Of pies and potholders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m still here!
> 
> Real life is crazy, sad and crazy-sad right now, and updates will be pretty sporadic. But while I don’t have much time or energy to spare until real life settles down, I have not and will not quit working on this fic, this series, these characters, or any such thing. I’m in this for the long haul, and I thank you for being patient.
> 
> You can find evidence of my continued activity on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/flamingo-queen-writes), where I occasionally put little snips out into the world.
> 
> Also, please pay attention to the tags for this, as there are some new ones added in to cover later sections of the fic. As always, if you ever need or want more information to avoid being triggered by anything, send me an Ask and I’ll try to keep you in the loop without spoiling anything.

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

Perhaps some might think it silly, or might think _her_ silly, but Polina basks in the warm glow of secondhand pride as she contemplates the pie currently browning in the oven, its edges safely protected by the thin, metal ring her beloved husband had fashioned for her years ago. 

And there is much to be proud of, after all. The Soldier’s very first pie—his very first anything, in all likelihood, except for tea. She frowns, recalling the second teapot brewed exactly as she likes her tea, without any instruction on her part. He’s clearly got a handle on tea.

But now he has a handle on pie, as well, at least if it’s blueberry pie. She smiles behind a hand and allows her gaze to travel to the side a smidge, from the lit up oven with its bubbling—but not surprising—pie to the black-clad, leather-strapped, gun-and-knife-adorned legs in front of her counter, supporting the Soldier as he reduces a week’s worth of vegetables into bite-sized pieces.

Polina blinks, drags her eyes from the Soldier’s oh-so-solid legs—as impossibly solid as the rest of him, though she doesn’t dare verify any of this solidity by feel—and finds nowhere else for them to rest. 

The Soldier’s boots are, in and of themselves, dangerous to contemplate for too long. And that’s discounting those knives he has tucked away in them. His legs are— Oh, his _legs_. If she allowed herself to, she could spend hours imagining those legs doing all sorts of things. His back has already proven to be indecently appealing, and while she could reflect on his shoulders all day, that isn’t necessarily a respectful—or respectable—thing to do.

She would hate to lose what propriety she’s managed to scrape together during the last however long, especially now. They’ll do lunch soon, as soon as the pie is set out to cool, really. And then it won’t be her sitting on a stool in her kitchen with hardly any audience at all and watching him move so gracefully and powerfully while he rolls pastry or chops vegetables.

No, no. It’ll be her sitting around a table with her family—her husband in particular—and the Soldier. Watching him swallow. Watching his throat move. Watching his jaw, and his lips and maybe he reaches across her to pass a bowl of roasted parsnips down the table. Maybe his arm brushes against her, maybe there is leather just under her nose, just touching her lips, just inviting her to—

_No, Polinka. Stop that._

This is exactly why she mustn’t allow herself to look at any of those parts of him that send her mind into terrible, terrible places. Wonderful places, but not places she can afford to dally in when her family is at the table watching her watch him. 

Her father-in-law will sit at one end of the table, of course. And she will naturally sit beside her son, to cut his food up and cajole him into eating the parsnips as well as the carrots. That places her husband and the Soldier across the table from her. So she will have almost nowhere else _to_ look other than at the Soldier.

Unless her Vovochka wants to give her a respite from arguing with their son about “yucky white carrots” and has little Vasya sit with him. That… She swallows. That would place her side-by-side with the Soldier, the leather-wrapped solid heat of him mere inches away. They would be shoulder-to-shoulder. Possibly even hip-to-hip.

She will die if that happens. 

All of her blood will rush to her face and to… other parts of her… and she will have none left at all to keep the rest of her body upright and living. It will be so much worse than crimping the pie. She will drop things. Things that the Soldier might reach down to pick up for her, because he is polite and helpful and it will never occur to him to leave things on the floor. 

And then his head would be… Why, practically in her _lap_ , his cheek might press against her knee or her thigh, and that would just… 

And the worst thing about that—the very worst thing—is he will never once realize what is happening around him. He won’t know what her husband sees when he disappears under the table near his wife’s legs. Or what her father-in-law thinks when such impropriety is thrown in his face. Or what her heartbeat will be doing when he kneels there between—beside! _beside_ —her legs. 

Or why.

He remains a delectable fawn, naive to her baser instincts, and seemingly possessing no baser instincts of his own. Not a single baser instinct. Not one. 

It makes her feel like the very farthest thing from a good hostess, to be ogling her guest in this manner, and dreaming about what all he could accomplish while his head is in her lap, if she were to just offer a pointer or two. 

He’s such a quick learner.

_No no no, Polinka!_

She flees from the thought before any part of her can be carted off even deeper into that particular corner of her imagination, and instead takes refuge in staring at the glimmering silvery machinery that is his left arm. That is safe. That is perfectly safe. She has never once had a dream about metal robot arms doing _things_ to her, or on her, or… or _in_ her.

That metal arm, with its metal hand, and its metal fingers. So dexterous, so gentle, with so much potential. It’s not some clumsy robot hand with unfeeling robot fingers, not if it can crimp a pie so precisely, or handle pastry so deftly. His metal hand is as much a part of him as the other—sure of movement, carefully restrained lest it do damage. Cautious. Maybe even protective.

And perhaps untiring. Perhaps nimble and steady and capable… for hours, where mere flesh might tire after several minutes. Perhaps immune to cramping, and with no fingernails to potentially pinch or scrape delicate tissue. Though there are those little plates like rings stacked from palm to fingertip, and those might pinch. But they might also add… texture… to an experience.

She clears her throat. Damn it all. Nothing about him is safe. He’s a menace from the tips of his hair to the tips of his toes to the tips of his metal fingers.

Polina clears her mind. It takes more effort than she would like to admit, though if she’s as honest with herself as usual… well. With considerable effort. An embarrassing amount of effort, considering she’s married to a fine man with his own nimble and untiring fingers, and really, her thoughts can just shape themselves up or shut themselves up.

It is just an arm. Made of metal, and with a beautiful star emblazoned in gleaming crimson just under the shoulder. And almost seeming calm, now that it has largely ceased making those fluttery ripples up and down its length, like an agitated cat whose tail has stopped lashing about once the source of its distress has left the room. If such an intricate and well-crafted thing as that arm can really be compared to a cat. 

Regardless, it’s behaving much more like an arm now. She watches the ever-so-slight movement of plate across plate as the Soldier reaches for a new parsnip, the surface of the arm shifting about the way muscles would under the skin in an arm made of flesh. It’s so natural, which is an odd thing to think about a metal arm. 

But now that it’s moving more like an arm and less like a factory machine, now that it’s stopped rippling up and down while remaining stationary, has stopped making those whirring, purring, clicking noises… It is easy to imagine it’s merely an arm painted in silvers and reds. It’s far easier to accept that it’s part of him when she can focus on how it behaves and not just on how well he can use it.

And it is part of him. More than just because it’s attached—she’s sure of that. And she’s just as certain that the metal arm is like his eyes. A window into the bottom of that deep internal lake of his. A peek at what he’s feeling, perhaps. And if she’s right, if the metal arm is so much a part of him that it can indicate distress when the rest of him hides it… 

Well, something has stopped its rippling. Something has calmed the Soldier’s arm, and therefore the Soldier himself, down. She wonders what it could be.

The vegetables themselves couldn’t have been any more soothing than the blueberries had been. And the setting has not changed, the occupants of the kitchen have not changed. So perhaps it’s the task itself that is so calming for the Soldier. Chopping, slicing, cutting… Well. She supposes that makes sense. Familiarity and all that.

And she tries not to wonder if he sees parsnips under the kitchen knife, and carrots, onions, potatoes, turnips and all the rest… or if he sees people.

She hopes he doesn’t see people.

No one should be plagued with visions of death after leaving the field behind for a restful week at a dacha. Not her husband, who is often tormented in his sleep with events he won’t share with her in any detail upon waking. Not his fellow operatives, who must surely be similarly afflicted. And not this Soldier with his velvet-and-flannel voice and kind eyes.

And his curious blend of uncanny perception and blind naivete.

Her little egg timer makes its even littler beep on the stovetop, and she’s gratified to see that the Soldier doesn’t flinch in the slightest. Years it took her, years and years, to find a timer for her kitchen that didn’t startle her Vovochka every time it went off. How nice that it works just the same for the Soldier.

She wonders if he would mind it terribly if she were to call him Piotr. Petya, maybe, though it would be horribly presumptuous of her to shorten even a placeholder name. She should ask him before doing it. Maybe after lunch.

Anyway, the Soldier’s lack of flinch at the timer certainly bodes well for a week full of baking. There will need to be so many dishes prepared for the weekend, so much bread, so many little cakes and sweets. Her husband comes from one of the largest families she’s encountered, and even with only some of them coming for the celebration, there will be so many mouths to feed.

Before she learned the Soldier would be staying with them, she’d thought she might get all the help she needed from her husband, whether that help came in the form of a kneaded lump of dough or a distracted toddler. He doesn’t often haunt her kitchen, but he enjoys it when he does. And by now she’s taught him enough to leave whole dishes to him.

Now that the Soldier is here, though—and has demonstrated willingness to follow instructions, if sometimes too literally—Polina wonders if she’ll have anything at all left to do in preparation other than watch and direct. Between her husband and the Soldier, she might spend the time helping her little cherub with his numbers.

She might not even have to ask her mother-in-law for assistance as the weekend gets closer. Maybe… Maybe the woman will even be impressed by what she’s able to accomplish in such a short time and so close to term, or by her resourcefulness in recruiting assistance.

Polina only ever allows herself very little by way of hoping her mother-in-law will like her, or enjoy her company, or ever bother to praise her. But oh, it would be so nice to have a mother again after all these years, even if just by marriage. 

And her mother-in-law already approves of Vladimir, naturally, so that’s a step in the right direction that her mother back home never took, if she’s going to look for the positive elements. She always tries to do that, after all.

Of course, it’s far more likely that her mother-in-law will be displeased that she’s roped Vladimir into kitchen work, thinking perhaps that she’s hounded him or nagged him or made unreasonable demands of him in order to have that time together. As her own mother is probably still fond of saying, it’s always easy to see your own flaws in others. Why should her mother-in-law see them together and assume happiness when there are alternative explanations that are far more familiar to her? After all, Polina wouldn’t necessarily classify her in-laws as happy people.

If they were happy together, surely they would spend more time together. And yet here is her father-in-law, without his wife, and that is the most common arrangement they configure themselves into. One without the other, and impossible to tell who is avoiding who.

Not at all like her and her Vovochka, who never minds stirring a batter or rolling out a pastry or arranging candies along the top of a cake if that means he can spend time with her, and who often volunteers his services in her kitchen without her even needing to hint at an invitation, and who—

“Oh! No no _no_ , potholders! _Potholders!_ ”

Polina is on her feet and flapping the first pair of potholders out of the drawer right up against the Soldier’s chest and face in an attempt to wrestle the pie from him before she even registers the clatter of her stool to the floor behind her, or the press of her belly into his, or the lack of wisdom in startling a man in her husband’s line of work. 

She doesn’t remember opening the drawer to retrieve said potholders, but she must have done, because the drawer is open and digs into her back when she remembers about military men and reflexes and tries to back up so the Soldier has room to actually accept a potholder, since he is resolutely holding that pie as far from her as he can get it.

But he doesn’t so much as reach for them, clearly shocked right out of her kitchen and into one of those darker places her husband occasionally gets lost in during his dreams, where all he can see is some horrible thing that happened in the field. But a waking nightmare, instead, somehow. 

Instead of making any move to grab a potholder or release the pie, he’s just frozen there, wedged into the corner by the stove and leaning back further still, pressing himself against the counters, wide-eyed, with the pie held high in one hand and—

—his poor _hand_ , oh, how could she get distracted like that, letting him— 

—how could _he_ just reach right in and—

—how could she so unthinkingly lunge at him—

—how can she wake him up from this—

The oven door closes with hardly a sound, followed by the drawer, and Polina finds herself smoothly maneuvered away from the Soldier and back toward the table before she even realizes that Vladimir has entered the room.

“He needs—”

One of the potholders is plucked from her hand and put on the counter, the vegetable mountain swept further toward the wall to make room. 

“Put the pie down, Soldier.” 

There’s a tone of voice she’s never heard from him before. It’s not harsh, exactly. It just… implies a fact that hasn’t happened yet. It’s an unquestioning assumption of future truth. It is impossible that the pie _not_ be put down.

And maybe that’s exactly how it works, because the Soldier’s eyes latch onto her husband’s like he’s the only solid object—perhaps the only object at all—for miles in any direction. Perhaps Vladimir is part of this nightmare. Maybe he was there, wherever it was, with the Soldier. 

She hopes that’s a good thing. Part of what helps her when her husband has these, though he’s always asleep for them, is that she _wasn’t_ there. She doesn’t fit into the nightmare, and so either she’s real or it’s real, and he always chooses her.

It must be a good thing, though, because the Soldier straightens somewhat, still tense but at least not trying to melt into the cupboards, and settles the pie on the potholder, somehow centering it without looking. 

He still hasn’t moved other than that, hasn’t taken a step away from the counter that must be gouging at his back with how he’s pressed against it, and he must be terrified and hurting, the poor lamb, and that’s on her, and oh, his poor, poor _hand_.

Polina wishes she could get past her husband, could see that the Soldier’s hand gets under the faucet, gets some cold water at least—something. Taking some of the pain away might help the other problem, too. 

But all she has access to is her husband’s back, his shoulders held in that particular loose and relaxed manner that she knows is a lie and his stance open in that way he has of being somehow as immovable as a house-sized boulder. She won’t budge him, she knows.

But she can still interject, bring his attention to the Soldier’s hand. It’s metal, but he has to have feeling in it in order to use it like he does. It has to hurt. “He needs—” 

“Not now, Polina,” her husband says, voice low, smooth, calmly tense. A breeze promising a downpour. An order, not a drill. It would be exciting—has been exciting—in other situations. It’s not exciting now, when she’s feeling so horrible for causing this. “I need you to stay back and stay quiet right now.”

She blinks. He’s speaking like there’s some threat in the room, like that afternoon years ago when he calmly directed her to keep away from the window when that hitman from MI6 was shooting at them from the opposite building, before they moved to Perm.

But the only issue here is that she’s sent the Soldier spiraling into a nightmare even when he’s wide awake, and he has also burned his hand, and he needs someone to care for that—for both things. There’s no need for her husband to use the soothing tone with the undercurrent of urgency on _her_. She’s not in any danger.

“Everything is fine,” Vladimir continues more softly.

And now he’s talking to the Soldier again, surely, because while there isn’t any danger, nothing is _fine_ and he’s not fooling anyone with that, especially not her. Except perhaps he’s fooling the Soldier, because the man does resume breathing at least, even if he still looks to be about two seconds from the end of his entire world.

She’s not even the recipient of that desperate stare, and yet her heart just about breaks seeing it. It’s so much worse than the nervous anticipation from before, or even the miserable self-reproach about a “baby’s worth” of crackers, which she still hasn’t figured out.

Polina obligingly stays back and keeps her mouth closed, even though the unnerving panic in the Soldier’s eyes makes her want nothing more than to move her husband aside and make use of the fact that she has never been in the field with the Soldier and therefore doesn’t belong in whatever nightmare he’s having. It works with her Vovochka. It would work with the Soldier, too.

But surely her husband knows what works to relieve this sort of distress when the Soldier is gripped by it. He has worked with the Soldier for years, after all, and if the Soldier truly is kept apart and only ever interacts with his “handlers,” then as one of those handlers, her husband should be an expert.

“Mission parameters remain unchanged,” her husband says, and now his oh-so calm voice is floating over iron, the way it had at the first, when telling the Soldier to put the pie down. “No one is hurt, nothing is broken, and you won’t be instructed to change that. This is a shadow op. There are no targets, no objectives. You have not been activated, and you will stand down.”

She isn’t sure what is meant by “activated” or what it is supposed to look like when the Soldier “stands down.” Perhaps a parade rest, or one of his nods, or an “understood.” He does like telling people that he understands. 

What actually happens is none of those things. The Soldier hardly does anything at all. She supposes perhaps his shoulders lose a little tension. Maybe he’s not pressing himself back against the counter quite so hard. It could be that his breathing evens out a little. He doesn’t seem any calmer for it, though, if any of that is actually real and not just her wishful thinking.

Vladimir takes a casual step back—so casual that she knows it can’t be anything of the sort—and uses his new position to further herd her around the table, away from the Soldier and away from the door to the main room and the bathroom beyond it with their first aid supplies, though what is she going to do to bandage a metal hand, anyway, so that should be fine.

And the Soldier tenses again, much more visibly than any melting calm had been. Why? They have given him even more room to breathe, and she isn’t foolishly waving potholders at him any longer. The space should be soothing, but the Soldier only looks more agitated, seems wound up and on the verge of moving.

“ _No_. You will stand down, Soldier.” It’s not a suggestion. She’s never heard such certainty in any voice before. “There is nothing to be on alert for.”

The Soldier’s eyes flick briefly past Vladimir’s shoulder, moving so quickly they don’t so much as fully land on her before returning their laser focus to him.

Her husband catches the shift—of course he does—and is quick with an even, measured response. “I know the stool is on the floor. So does she. I won’t allow her to stumble over it. She is safe and unharmed. She is my responsibility, Soldier. Not yours.” 

She isn’t sure what it is she sees in the Soldier’s eyes, or what it is his lips are doing, exactly. He doesn’t seem at all calmer, but his agitation seems to have shifted again, like he’s running through a list of things to panic about and her husband is merely helping him check them off one by one.

Vladimir does something, makes a motion, perhaps, a hand signal, an expression, she can’t tell from behind, and then continues, the steel fading from his voice and reassurance flooding in to take its place. “Thank you for looking out for her while I was in the other room. You’re relieved of that duty. I’ll set the stool upright later. She won’t fall.”

Polina opens her mouth to agree with him, to add some reassurances of her own—of course she won’t trip, of course she won’t fall, she knows the stool is there, she’ll be extra careful—but something tells her that she should not intrude on this one-sided conversation. That her husband has a system that works, that his words are some sort of spell being cast. 

That she could break it and prolong the fear response, or possibly even unsettle the Soldier further. 

Oh, why did she just leap at him like that? She knows better. She does. She’s learned not to make any sudden movements around military men. And while she’ll be the first to admit she loses her head a little during a pregnancy, this is not something she should get wrong any more than she would shake her husband awake from a nightmare instead of pinching at his toe. So why…?

“Good afternoon, Soldier,” her husband says. “I have a task for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.


	18. First Impressions | Vladimir: Call and response

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

“Oh! No no _no_ , potholders! _Potholders!_ ”

Vladimir pushes his chair from the table before Polina gets even halfway through her exclamation. He doesn’t care what his father will say. _That_ has to be fixed, and he’s not letting his wife make an attempt. She’ll get herself ki—

And yes, that’s an accurate assessment, even if he didn’t finish thinking it. He never wants to see his wife so close to disaster again. Flinging fabric in the Soldier’s face, yelling at him, pressing up against him—any of those have the potential to go south fast, but all three?

And that’s to say nothing of the indirect stressors contributing to the powder keg of a situation unfolding in this kitchen. The Soldier’s been off balance for well over an hour, possibly since arriving, and now he has a handful of oven-hot pie plate and is _trapped_ by a civilian he’s terrified of harming, who is trying to wrestle a molten pie from him with hands that _aren’t_ metal and _will_ get burned badly if she succeeds.

Well shit. First things first, though. Give the Soldier an out.

Vladimir closes the oven door to allow a clear option for retreat and then the drawer with all of Polina’s hand sewn potholders to give the Soldier the space needed to eel out of the kitchen in pursuit of that option if that’s what he ends up doing.

It would be ideal if the Soldier stays where he is and allows himself to be calmed down—either he or his father will have to reprimand him if he leaves, and it’s so early in the week for that. But if the Soldier does need to flee, better that he has a clear escape route without civilians blocking the path. 

Often just having such an option available will ensure that the Soldier doesn’t look for it or take advantage of it. Always, _always_ give the Soldier options. He’ll take the one you want if you give him others to consider and reject. But he’ll invent his own if you don’t, and that is never good.

That’s apparently a difficult concept to grasp, given how few of the handlers he’s trained over the years ever put the strategy to use. Yes, the Soldier is highly trained and exceedingly docile if handled with care. But _anything_ will lash out if it’s cornered, and a pressurized pot _will_ eventually explode. The Soldier is always under pressure, and far too easy to unintentionally corner.

And none of them can afford that here.

“He needs—”

Vladimir takes a potholder and shoves over a mound of parsnips to make room for it. “Put the pie down, Soldier.”

That’s alright for an opening volley. It’s a clear directive, it includes his designation, and it’s something the Soldier is already keenly interested in doing. And once on the path to compliance, it’s far easier to continue on that path. Inertia does a lot of their work for them, when they actually allow it to. 

Another thing he can’t seem to drill into his trainees. Sometimes it’s best to give the Soldier a nudge and then just stand back and let it work itself out. That’s not an option now, of course. This is not a “let it work itself out” situation.

The Soldier puts the pie down. Excellent.

“He needs—”

Less excellent. 

“Not now, Polina.” She’s the single biggest source of stress for the Soldier in this kitchen, as much as he wishes it were otherwise. She is the very center of this storm. Of course that’s not something she can accept, even if he were to say it and she were to hear it. 

Beyond acceptance, he doubts she will be able to even understand that _she_ constitutes a threat. The words will wash over her like so much gibberish. He can hear her now. Her? A threat? Don’t be silly.

Better that she be warned about the other threat in this kitchen. The one gathering up stress like a cyclone sucking up ocean currents. That, she would understand, even if she argued, and it’s easily enough conveyed by tone of voice. “I need you to stay back and stay quiet right now.”

He’s relieved when she responds to that tone as she's meant to, though he hates having to use it. For all that she thrives on imagined danger and views actual danger through rosy lenses, danger of any kind is the last place he wants her to be.

But it appears she’s going to do as directed, which allows him to shift his focus to the Soldier again without having to split it between two different fronts.

“Everything is fine,” he says. It’s mostly a lie, but whatever. Sometimes the Soldier needs those lies so that he can calm down enough to make them truths. “Mission parameters remain unchanged.”

As for what those parameters are… His father says this is a shadow op, so that’s what he’ll go with. Shadow ops don’t tend to include violent objectives and are almost never run concurrent with a traditional sanction op or similar message delivery. At least, not intentionally. Incidental violence is… 

Well, it’s always possible that something can come up. It’s happened before. Even in the General’s office once, in and amongst all that paperwork. And that had been both terrible and fatal to the idiots who thought to snoop around. It’s not just a saying: Curiosity does occasionally kill things.

But incidental violence is rare on a shadow op. Rare enough that he is confident it won’t be or become a lie to reassure the Soldier about what he will _not_ be tasked with this week. Some lies are not good at all where the Soldier is concerned.

“No one is hurt,” he says, putting the certainty of solid stone into the words. The Soldier can’t be left guessing on that front, especially given his fumbling attempts to anticipate Polina’s physical needs earlier with the tea and crackers. “Nothing is broken.”

And the most reassuring of all: “And you won’t be instructed to change that.” Vladimir takes the time to watch those words sink in, looks for the moment when they’re believed. _That’s right, Soldier,_ he thinks. _I don’t play around with that. Not ever. Trust me._  

It’s not the first time he’s wished telepathy was real, and it doubtless won’t be the last. But the Soldier is perceptive. Vladimir has found that if he thinks something hard enough at the Soldier while interacting, it sometimes shows up in his eyes, or in his stance, or the set of his jaw. However and wherever it is the Soldier reads someone’s intentions beyond merely their next movements.

And it’s not just him. The Soldier is scarily accurate when reading people if they are motivated enough or open about their intentions, provided their objectives are within his range of experience. Of course, he’s scarily clueless about those intentions if he hasn’t encountered them before. Or if he doesn’t remember encountering them. One and the same, really.

Vladimir tries to project as much earnest honesty as he can without sacrificing the particular cadence necessary to handle the Soldier. _You can trust me, Soldier. Go ahead and trust me._

“This is a shadow op. There are no targets, no objectives.” At least, he hopes that’s what his father specified when briefing the Soldier. No targets is a sure enough bet, given the nature of the intended introductions. No objectives? That’s a guess, but one with a high rate of accuracy. If the Soldier was lurking in the kitchen and agreed to _stay_ there once caught at it, there couldn’t be some other objective to hold his attention.

At least, that’s what he’s going to bank on.

“You have not been activated, and you will stand down.” _There you go,_ he thinks, as the Soldier subtly shifts his stance. It’s not enough, not yet, but it’s a very good sign. 

Vladimir maintains his eye contact, silently willing this to continue as smoothly as it has started. _Come back down to baseline, Soldier. You know I wouldn’t lie about that._ Hell, no one would lie about _that_ , not even Sasha, who lies about everything else. There were some risks not even the most reckless sadist would take, and being unclear or contradictory about activation status? Definitely one of those risks.

And _there_ is the slight relaxing, good. Now it’s safe to get his wife even further away. He can’t put the entire table between her and the Soldier—the stool is in the way—but he can get her beside it, can add to the obstruction of that exit, can make sure that any flight response is directed toward his father, who can more than handle it, and not toward Polina, who absolutely can’t.

If one can’t prevent an explosion, direct it. Channel the outburst away from people who will be hurt by it.

Except there the Soldier goes, sliding back the way they came, gathering all that nervous energy back up despite the previous success at dispelling it.

“ _No_ ,” he scolds. Better to just get that out there to start, even before he takes the time to reassess the surroundings and locate the new source of agitation. It’s little more than a roll of parchment against the nose of a rabid dog, but the tone will at least ensure his words are heard. It buys him time.

“You will stand down, Soldier.” And he will. Vladimir knows it, the Soldier knows it, the universe itself knows it. Whether the Soldier will act on that knowledge alone or needs another fact layered on top is still in question, though, so Vladimir adds the nudge just in case. With the Soldier, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

“There is nothing to be on alert for,” he says. Another thing very few would lie about, though Sasha is possibly one of those who would. Still, Sasha is not here. Sasha _won’t_ be here. And no one who _is_ here would dismiss the Soldier’s instinct for threat detection, any more than they’d ignore a dead canary in a mine. 

The only way anyone with an ounce of sense would tell the Soldier _not_ to be alert was if there was truly nothing to worry about. Why disable an early warning system if there was no need to? And so, if they say there’s nothing to be on alert for, the Soldier should be able to trust them and calm the hell down already. So why… 

Ah. Yes. As the Soldier reminds him with that minute flick of the eyes, there is the stool. Vladimir would have picked that up sooner if this other situation hadn’t needed to be settled first. Things in their places, everything in order; yes, that’s certainly one part of what has the Soldier worked up. As for the other, leave it to the Soldier to be paranoid about a falling hazard. 

Though if anyone is justified in having such a phobia, it’s this Soldier in front of him. Falls like _that_ one were supposed to kill people for their own good. Terrible luck, to have survived that. Though good luck for Department X, he supposes.

Vladimir isn’t sure whether he’s uneasy about the Soldier’s lack of trust in his perception of the surroundings—the stool, in this case—or whether he’s pleasantly surprised that the Soldier has decided to fold Polina into the category of “small, fragile, innocent, to-be-protected.”

He can probably afford to be both. It doesn’t bode well for the Soldier to mistrust his judgement, true, but it’s a massive relief to know that his wife doesn’t register to the Soldier as a potential threat, even after the potholder frenzy. Historically, women in this kitchen have not been kind to him, but Mother’s actions have at least not bled over into the Soldier’s perception of Polina.

“I know the stool is on the floor,” Vladimir says. Re-establish himself as having an accurate read on the environment. Confirm that he finds the Soldier’s concerns worthwhile, that he takes Polina’s safety into consideration. 

“So does she,” he continues, because it might be helpful to toss out a suggestion that she’s more attentive than the Soldier apparently thinks she is. “I won’t allow her to stumble over it. She is safe and unharmed.”

He reads progress in the Soldier’s eyes, but they aren’t quite there yet. It does give him the chance to head off the next bit of whichever mental jumble is twisting about in the Soldier’s head, though. Just pluck out the underpinnings of his heightened sense of accountability. 

The Soldier can’t fail at a task that isn’t his, so he’ll just take that self-assigned task away. Try to get in front of the Soldier’s paranoid train wreck of potential cause-effect disaster pairings, slow it down if he can’t stop it outright.

“She is my responsibility, Soldier. Not yours.”

Most handlers would leave it at that. If he was on base and there were trainers on hand to send the Soldier off to for a few hours, a chance to swap the sting of that loss for the sting of overworked muscles, Vladimir might leave it there, too. It’s not wise to offer praise in excess of the norm.

But this is not one of their bases, and there are no trainers. Leaving the Soldier with nothing but revoked duty to focus on would be idiocy itself. No. Soften the blow, instead, smooth out the edges, let him know that failure is not the reason the task is being taken away.

And he would be criminally stupid not to leap at an opportunity to re-enforce whatever protective instincts the Soldier is building up for his wife. If his family has to be involved in this project, he’ll take any insurance he can get where their safety is concerned. 

So praise it is, and in a form the Soldier can accept.

“Thank you for looking out for her while I was in the other room. You’re relieved of that duty.”

No reprimand for assuming a responsibility it was not his to take on. No accusation of presumptuousness. Just an acceptance that the Soldier saw a task that needed to be done and made himself useful, an acknowledgement that he _was_ useful and that it was appreciated. 

And now a promise that Vladimir is going to take over that task himself, rather than cancelling it or leaving it unassigned. That Polina—he wonders what she is in the Soldier’s eyes, what designation he’s come up with for her, which of her attributes he’s decided is the most important to remember—will not fall.

“I’ll set the stool upright later. She won’t fall.”

And there. Crisis averted. The Soldier is fully with him again, will be able to accept a new task, something to focus him and give him a constructive outlet. Something he can succeed at, hopefully, to dispel some of what has happened in this kitchen. Something to prevent a new crisis down the road.

The Soldier does well enough with perceived failure—that’s where he gravitates whenever he assesses his own actions, anyway—but there is such a thing as too much. And from what he’s heard in the last couple of hours, the Soldier is approaching it.

It is never wise to let him stew in failure, not without at least a solid chance to climb up out of it. The principle of always giving the Soldier options holds true here as well, possibly even more so. Give him an escape route and he won’t take it. Give him a chance to succeed and he’ll do almost anything to please. There has to be balance between failure and success, and there must always be opportunity to turn something around. 

And the Soldier must be going nuts not knowing exactly what is in the area around this dacha. Prowling the area is typically one of the first things he does after being relocated. It’s like a bowl of warm milk to help the paranoid jungle cat in his head calm down and sleep. There’s only one task available out here that runs no risk of backfiring, and that task is a long-overdue perimeter check.

“Good afternoon, Soldier.” And there’s the flicker of relieved anticipation, and Vladimir can well imagine exactly what’s flashing across the Soldier’s mind. Things are going to adhere to protocol, things are going to make sense again, things are going to go right for a change. He is rescued. What joy is this.

In a situation any less fraught than this one, Vladimir might delay the second part of that call to gauge how receptive the Soldier is, to see whether there is anything lacking or needing a refresh, or even just to give him a moment longer with the relief that opening line always brings. Here? Now? He doesn’t pause for longer than the beat dictated by protocol. He can’t afford to.

“I have a task for you.” 

 _That’s right, Soldier. Task._ Not mission, not question, not reprimand. That should align well with the shadow op and keep him from getting too wound up in the need to comply, or find a perfect answer, or gather up those internal stormclouds of failure that are never far away and hold them even closer still.

The Soldier assumes his baseline mission-ready pose, willing to be commanded in any way Vladimir sees fit. It never gets old watching that transformation from wary anxiety in the face of the unknown to banked confidence ready to be applied to any situation that presents itself.

“I am ready to comply,” the Soldier says.

And Vladimir believes him. Just as he would never lie to the Soldier about activation status and the likelihood of being directed toward violence, so the Soldier would never lie to him about his compliance status. 

While the calibration loop hints at a lingering sense of uncertainty on the Soldier’s part, that uncertainty is buried deep. Deep enough that actually performing the task should smother it entirely.

And if it doesn’t, well, that is probably the way his father wants it for whatever assessment he’s got in mind for this doomed week and its equally doomed weekend. Because this whole thing _is_ doomed. Not even a full day in, and he has to pull out the call and response? 

Vladimir would shake his head, if that weren’t a mixed signal for the Soldier and fully capable of shattering what progress they have made. He can shake his head all he wants after the Soldier is out of sight. He can dust off the argument that’s failed three times now and see if it fares any better now that there’s been a—predictable—mishap to prove his point.

In the meantime, he will merely be thankful for the combination of unlikely circumstances that saw Polina take on the role of “thing to be protected” and not “thing to be defended against.”

If this is the first day of at least eight, he’s not going to make it. This is exhausting, and he hasn’t even tried to explain the last several minutes to Polina yet. She isn’t going to like the explanation, and his father is not going to help him. Might even stir the pot a little, because that’s just who his father is, damn him.

Looking back on the prior evening’s truncated briefing, it’s a mystery to Vladimir why he thought his headstrong Polinochka would keep her distance from the Soldier and render a full briefing or unadorned truths unnecessary.

A mystery, and a mistake that could prove costly. 

He’s not willing to pay that cost. He’ll have to correct his mistake now that he’s no longer in denial about having the Soldier in this dacha with his family. And if his beloved wife leaves him over the truth, well, better she live a happy life with someone else than die for his lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.


	19. First Impressions | Polina: Broken promises of violence

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

“Good afternoon, Soldier. I have a task for you.”

Polina has barely enough time to wonder why her husband is greeting the Soldier _now_ , as though they have just encountered one another for the first time today, before she’s distracted by the same transformation she had seen before, when the Soldier had decided that he was going to bake the pie she’d asked for.

It’s no less remarkable to watch this time. That metal arm does a little shimmy, but other than that, it’s much the same—certainty settling into the eyes, tension bleeding off his shoulders, breathing smooth and controlled, his entire body shifting ever so slightly until he’s a tranquil pond once more, his undercurrents deep and hidden.

“I am ready to comply,” he says, his voice a confident, rumbling tank moving inexorably forward, wrapped in flannel and covered over with downy snow.

And Polina shivers despite herself, feeling her cheeks flare up hotly once more, as the Soldier’s voice practically purrs out of his throat and into her ears. Oh, and thank everything that will hear her for ensuring that her husband is not watching her blush over that. Or reach out and steady herself with a hand on the table. 

And she had thought his “understood” was distracting.

“The perimeter check has been put off long enough.” Her husband gestures toward the doorway to the main room. “You’ll make your rounds while we eat, and report back to the General.”

What? Polina shifts to put her hand on her husband’s shoulder, just as sturdy as the table, and possibly more so. He can’t send the Soldier out now.

He needs— Well, he can’t go wandering around outside right after being all jumpy like this, even if he does currently look like the unfairly attractive textbook definition of imperturbable. Why, no one has so much as _looked_ at his hand. And when is _he_ going to eat if not when _they_ do? 

“But first—” she starts.

“Polina,” her father-in-law says, his voice soft but nevertheless somehow cutting through her words.

She looks to the side, her attention shifting along with the Soldier’s, and notices her father-in-law standing there in the doorway, looking as calm as her husband sounds and holding little Vasya to keep the boy from joining them. 

When did he get there? Why didn’t she hear the scrape of his chair as he got up, or see him from the corner of her eye? Is she really so very out of sorts today that she fails to see men until she’s practically stepping on them? That she accosts high-strung soldiers with potholders and flailing arms mere minutes after being thankful an egg timer didn’t startle them? That she loses track of her own child?

Clearly, the answer is yes. She wonders when that started. It can’t be entirely attributed to her Anyechka waiting so patiently to join their family. It’s very possible the Soldier himself is a contributing factor. He is so very distracting, after all. With the leather. And the boots. And the everything else.

Her father-in-law takes a step into the kitchen and sets Vasily down, allowing the child to dart under the table to cling to her skirts and babble softly about loud noises and her being okay. 

She reaches down to rest a comforting hand against the back of his head. Imagine, forgetting where her own child is, even for a moment. Granted, there was a lot going on, but she can feel her mother’s disapproval all the way from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

“…make _nine_ rounds, Soldier,” her father-in-law is saying, every word but the one delivered lightly, a mere afterthought, and yet also with that same certainty of future outcome. The Soldier’s flinch—so brief she might have imagined it—doesn’t seem to concern him in the slightest. “And you’ll confirm that the grounds are _benign_ before you return.”

There’s another flinch, this one curiously shared by her husband, but the Soldier recovers just as quickly as from the other bizarrely emphasized word. 

“Yes, General,” he replies. 

It’s the most threatening he’s sounded yet, the coldest, the hardest, the least emotional. But she still can’t find it in herself to feel threatened by him. She’s seen his eyes. They’re different now, more opaque, almost shuttered like a window in a winter storm. But the man who made her a pie in this very kitchen could never be a threat to her. The violence he presents is a promise he won’t make good on.

Her father-in-law takes a step toward the table, clearing a path out of the kitchen and into the main room and putting himself between her and the Soldier. He looks pleased with himself, but since that’s his usual demeanor, she isn’t sure it means anything.

And the Soldier simply turns toward the offered exit, without hesitation or even seeking clarification, instead having interpreted the words as dismissal. 

Well, if he has no questions, she certainly does. What counts as the perimeter? Why nine times around it? What sort of stilted word choice is “benign,” anyway? People don’t speak that way. There’s nothing wrong with “safe” or “secure.” And why no concern for his hand, no offer of lunch, not even a thermos of water or tea? He’s been in this kitchen even longer than she has, and has had not a single drop to drink.

Yet another bad mark on her hospitality checklist. She will have to do better. The fact that the Soldier is the epitome of a well-formed man is no excuse not to be hospitable. A good hostess. A proper woman, fulfilling her role and making her guests feel welcome.

“Leave it,” her father-in-law commands as the Soldier glides past him, because a tone like that can be nothing less than a command. It’s even more a command than her husband’s fact-that-hasn’t-happened-yet tone earlier. As for what he’s commanding… 

Leave it? Leave _what?_ Why would he be so vague when even she knows that the Soldier responds best to demonstrations and specifics. And her father-in-law cannot possibly be unaware of that, what with his years of experience compared to her couple of hours.

The Soldier seems to know exactly what he means, though. Something flickers across his face, there and gone, before he steps backward so smoothly it’s hard to believe he had been moving forward. He wordlessly unholsters the gun strapped to his thigh and sets it far back on the bit of countertop between stove and wall, its handle…

She thinks that’s called a handle. It’s the part your hand goes on, anyway, if you’re doing it right. Her Vovochka hadn’t _always_ insisted that the dacha be a firearm-free zone, and she remembers watching with delight as he shot stone after stone off the fence posts.

It’s such a dark gun. And not shiny at all. She thought it would be shiny out of its holster, but her husband’s gun was never shiny, so she doesn’t know why she thought the Soldier’s would be. Perhaps because of the magnificent shining arm.

Oh, she was so very delighted by the sharp crack of her husband’s gun firing, the flash of light, the birds all flying off at once at the first shot. It’s different with a small child in the area, of course. She certainly appreciates the additional precautions that remove such weapons from the path of tiny fingers. 

She _doesn’t_ so much appreciate that gun being out of the Soldier’s safekeeping and lying exposed on her counter with its handle—she’s _sure_ it’s called that now that her train of thought is back on the rails—turned toward her father-in-law. And therefore also toward her. And toward her son, though out of his reach, at least.

She has a moment of flickering dismay at the thought of her little Vasyenka’s curiosity, the knowledge that there’s a reason her husband is unarmed in the dacha, a reason the gun remains in the trunk of the car, a reason even the knives are put away or so securely sheathed that they can’t be pried from their resting place by even a very determined toddler. 

But the gun is not anywhere near the edge of the counter. It’s not in easy reach of her father-in-law, even, being so far from the edge. As though the Soldier had to follow orders but still wanted to be sure only specific people could reach it, and only intentionally. As though the gun is yet another promise of violence that he refuses to keep.

Even if her Vasyenka had seen enough to be interested in the mystery object, what with his face pressed against her dress, it was out of sight now up high on the counter, out of reach so far back against the wall, and… 

And probably very, very loaded. Fully loaded.

Why wouldn’t it be? What use is an empty gun, after all? It might be good for threatening others if you had nothing else to hand and wanted to intimidate an opponent into backing down. But the Soldier himself _is_ a threat, at least for anyone with more sense than she has. Intimidation incarnate, tightly wrapped—so delectably and snugly wrapped—in leather that is itself another threat, albeit an incredibly appealing one. And armed with still more threats strapped to himself. 

There is no part of him that wouldn’t terrify someone he had cause to point a gun at. An empty gun is of no use at all when its carrier is already several times more threatening to start with. Any gun he carries will be loaded, practical, not just for show.

She tries to push the rambling thought aside. Loaded or not— _definitely loaded_ , she thinks—danger is less appealing when it could spell disaster for her child. She would far rather the Soldier had taken that weapon with him, along with the knives and his own tempting self, with his hard planes and angles, his graceful curves, his finger-inviting hair, his soulful eyes, and all the rest of him.

Her father-in-law doesn’t take the gun up, doesn’t tuck it in his belt or some inner pocket of his coat, doesn’t even look at the thing sitting so dark and deadly on her countertop. He merely moves back to lean against the open doorway after the Soldier passes through it.

And so there they all are, in her kitchen. Everyone except the Soldier, so recently recovered from a waking nightmare and already sent out looking for enemies while down a weapon. Though that’s a possible reason for not taking the gun with him, she supposes. Less chance of a misfire if he’s startled by something… 

But something tells her the Soldier has never misfired a weapon in his life, which places her back at zero for understanding why her father-in-law wanted the thing left behind.

There’s this, at least: Her son is safely within her reach, safely away from the weapon on her countertop, safely unaware of that potential disaster. The Soldier saw to that by placing it so far from the edge of the counter. It must have been intentional. It must have. The Soldier doesn’t seem any more prone to coincidence than her father-in-law. 

Like they’re made for each other. 

She wonders what her father-in-law’s intention really is, ordering the Soldier to leave the gun behind. She suspects that will nag at her until she finds a way to ask him. Some strategy or other that will actually pull an answer from the man who must have taught her husband all he knows about keeping the truth out of someone’s hands, even if he goes about it differently than his son does.

Polina smooths her son’s unruly hair down and looks over at her father-in-law, at the man with even more answers than the Soldier himself has tucked away. 

While her husband, meaning the best in the world, tries to hide the dark things behind vague words like brightly painted verbal screens, this man goes to no such effort. If he will answer her question, then he’ll answer it. And otherwise, he’ll tell her very directly that he will not be answering a thing. And that will be the end of it. He is an immovable object in that regard.

If she can be an unstoppable force, maybe when they meet in the middle, an answer or two will appear like sparks struck off a flint. It probably won’t light a fire of information the way her Vovochka had lit that pile of brush without even a match—just like he’d light a cook fire in the field, he’d said, though he had alluded to other fires one might need to start in the field, and she hadn’t looked too closely at that. Hadn’t needed to. 

No, butting heads with her father-in-law will not net her much success, but it’ll be something. She has no illusions about herself being craftier than her father-in-law. She won’t peel any secrets off him that he doesn’t want to hand her, but he might appreciate a bit of tenacity. And she has that in spades.

She will merely wait for the front door to squeak open and click closed, and then she will demand her answers. 

Except that there is silence and more silence from the other room, while her husband moves behind her to reset the stool as he’d promised the Soldier and her son paws at her skirt silently asking to be picked up. He’ll need to use his words. They’ve discussed that. She and her Vovochka are a united front on the matter.

Polina takes a few steps forward to look past her father-in-law, ignoring her son’s whined but wordless complaints about her moving while he’s trying to hold onto her leg. A tantrum now will cost her the chance to try her stubbornness against her father-in-law’s, but the rules are the rules, and if she loses this chance, she will _make_ herself another one. See if she doesn’t.

She expects to see the Soldier by the front door, possibly gathering or discarding some bit of that leather uniform in preparation for the “perimeter check.” But he is not there. The door has been opened without a squeak from the top hinge and closed without a click of the latch. Not even the coats on their hooks have been disturbed by his passage.

It’s as if he was never there at all. If her kitchen didn’t smell like blueberry pie and crispy pastry, if her countertop wasn’t covered in precisely cubed vegetables, if her heart was beating a little more slowly… Why, she might have been tempted to assume she’d dreamed him up. It would hardly be the first time, though it would be the first time her dream chopped carrots for her.

So silent, this Soldier. Or perhaps he simply has a way with doors. It would make sense that he was as skilled at silencing a door as he was at silencing another human being. The one would naturally prove helpful in accomplishing the other. And his voice is so soft, so quiet. Why wouldn’t his movements match?

She wonders, briefly, whether he always leaves so little trace of his passage, so few clues that he was ever present. And she suspects the answer to that is yes, he does. It’s likely the only reminders left behind are splattered messes on walls. 

And from what she’s seen of him, he is not fond of messes. He will make one when directed to, but she imagines he would prefer to leave cleaner, gentler signs behind—signs like piles of healthy produce, ready for roasting and stewing and sauteing during the coming week. But that sort of thing is perhaps not possible. Or not permitted.

Polina isn’t sure which is worse—that everything in his experience leads to a mess, a death, and there _is_ nothing else available to him… or that he is only ever allowed the option of making messes and taking lives so despite the alternatives in plain sight, there _might as well be_ nothing else. She recalls his expression when she first walked in to find him in her kitchen, and adds a third possibility: making bloody messes might be all he thinks he’s good for.

Her Vovochka has his moments like that, after all, times where he’ll stare into the distance looking like the crimes of all mankind are squarely on his shoulders, times when he’ll go a whole evening without saying a word but just wearing that vague hangdog remorse all across his face and cracking his knuckles with enough force she worries about him breaking something. Less intense moments than when he wakes from a nightmare, but so much harder to watch.

Why shouldn’t the Soldier have moments of his own? He’s as much a military man as her husband, and possible more so, given that he can have a nightmare without even being asleep. 

But her husband has her to come home to, has her to comfort him and reassure him, has her to distract him when he needs it or to listen when he needs that. His moments are just that—moments. Days, sometimes, or even weeks, like after the mission he refuses to speak about. But temporary.

As far as she can tell, the Soldier doesn’t have anyone at all. His moments might not be momentary in any way.

Her eyes prickle at the corners, and she blinks several times in a row to bring herself back around. She can be upset, but she can’t be so upset that she loses whatever tiny advantage she might be able to gather over the scene unfolding in her kitchen. 

And what a scene. Her child in a room with a gun just lying there on the counter. Her husband picking up the fallen stool and looking chagrined. Her father-in-law looking pleased with himself. At least that last is not unexpected.

“Up, Mama,” her little one finally whines, pulling at the skirt of her dress. “I want up!”

Well, she can do that, especially now that he’s decided to use his words. Polina moves back to her preferred stool, now righted, and sits facing her husband and father-in-law. She hardly has much of a lap left this far into her pregnancy, but no matter. She helps her son clamber up onto her knee and then onto the table, taking care that he faces her, and not the gun. 

Hopefully, the remaining crackers will distract him, this close to lunch. If she didn’t want him to eat crackers, she knows they’d be the first thing he would grab for, after all.

“Was it really necessary to send him away?” Polina eyes her husband as she hands Vasily a cracker. He industriously tucks it between the plaits of one of her braids. “No lunch? Not even a cool cloth for his hand?”

“He’s unharmed, Polya,” Vladimir says, sounding tired. And maybe he is. It _was_ a very tense moment there in this kitchen. “I swear. There’s rarely any case to be made for sending him out injured, and we haven’t done that now.”

She scoffs. “If he can manipulate pastry with that hand so that there’s not a single tear or unwanted dimple, then he can feel a scalding hot pie when he picks it up out of an oven.”

And he can. She knows he can. There is simply no way at all that someone can use a hand that way and not feel what he was doing with it. She refuses to believe otherwise. If he were clumsy with it, or dropped things, or if those fingers didn’t move so smoothly… then sure. But she won’t be told he could hold that pie and not feel it.

Her husband has the good graces to at least look uncomfortable as he leans against the sink and holds his hands still enough that she can see the willpower going into not fidgeting. And from the look of it, he’s not planning to lie his way out of it. Not directly, anyway. There’s always the glittery sugar coating option, though.

“Pain and injury aren’t exactly as well connected for him as they are for others,” he says, obviously picking his words with care, and possibly beginning to spin a fresh colorful screen over the truth. “He’s—”

“You’re telling me that picking that up and holding onto it for that long wasn’t painful for him?” Polina raises her eyebrow, trusting that her challenge will not be dampened by the mess their son is currently making of her hair, having pulled a few locks out of the braids and smashed crackers in the rest.

Vladimir locks eyes with her. “It was painful,” he says, his voice steadier than it has any right to be, when he’s admitting to that. “Now it’s not. The stimulus is gone, and so is the pain. Nothing was injured.” 

He sighs, runs his hand through his hair before returning his elbow to the lip of the sink. “As far as he’s concerned, that might as well have never happened. It’s over, and he’s moved on.” When he continues, he sounds far more natural, less strained. Almost earnest. “It’s not like if one of us got burned and there was an injury left behind needing care. There’s nothing left of the pie plate but a memory of pain.”

She frowns. “But it _did_ hurt him.”

“While he was holding it,” he qualifies. “Yes.”

But that doesn’t make any sense. The reason you didn’t shove your hand in an oven unprotected wasn’t fear of having to care for a burn. It was fear of the pain of burning your hand. And her husband just said the Soldier would have the memory of it hurting. Surely he’d know beforehand as well.

“And he knew it would hurt him?” she asks, plucking a halved cracker from a braid and putting it in Vasily’s mouth, instead. She will definitely need to wash her hair tonight. Hopefully she won’t be too upset with her husband by then, and he can help.

“I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t have known. The Soldier is not stupid.”

Polina blinks, not sure what she expected his answer to be if not that, and yet still surprised. “But then why would he do that? If he knew it would hurt him.”

Vladimir pauses, possibly searching for a pretty lie to tell her. She might be washing her own hair tonight. “I don’t know, Polya,” he finally says, and that, she feels, is at least partly true. Maybe even mostly true. And not sweetly spun at all. He really must be tired. Last night’s tossing and turning must be catching up to him. 

“It probably just didn’t occur to him that there was such a thing as a potholder,” he continues. “Or that he could use a towel. Or that it was worth the trouble to do anything but reach in there and grab the pie by hand.”

“…worth the trouble?” She knows’s she’s lost control of her eyebrows, but she moderates her voice to at least sound a little less upset. He always clams up tighter when he feels she’s nearing whatever limits he’s set on how much distress any given subject is permitted to cause her. 

Well she’s well and truly past any limits, and if he thinks she’s going to let him clam up, he has a oyster knife of “not so fast, mister” waiting for him. She’ll get that pearl out, thank you ever so kindly, and see if she doesn’t.

She narrows her eyes. “It wasn’t ‘worth the trouble’ to avoid hurting himself?”

“He used his left hand, per protocol.” Her husband shrugs, turning his hands palm-up in a gesture of conversational helplessness while leaving his elbows planted on the edge of the sink behind him. Oh, the effort he’s going to to remain stationary instead of pacing this kitchen. 

“The Soldier generally makes an effort to avoid injury,” he says, “even if he is rarely so concerned with discomfort. That’s all the concrete explanation I have to offer, Polina.”

“What about less concrete explanations, then?”

Vladimir shrugs. “Anything more than that is conjecture at best without asking him directly. And his answers aren’t always logical, even when you do ask.” He shares a quick look with his father, and apparently receives no assistance. “ _I_ can’t read his mind.”

She studies her husband closely. It is not all he has to offer, though he’s clearly as frustrated by that as she is. There is something that he is not saying, and it is a something she will not like. But he’s as much as admitted that the Soldier doesn’t consider pain to be something worth avoiding… 

Or, the dark thought flashes through her mind, perhaps, doesn’t think it is something that _can_ be avoided, so why bother trying.

It doesn’t reflect well on the day-to-day routines going on at that base for a man to nonchalantly endure something as painful as burning a hand on a dish straight from an oven, without even an attempt to escape that misery. 

Even if that man won’t still be in pain after he lets go. Even if he _does_ apparently go to minimal trouble to keep himself from injuring his actual flesh-and-blood hand in the process. Like it’s an effort, an active, intentional behavior rather than an instinct for self-preservation.

Something is horribly, horribly wrong with this whole situation, and neither of the men who could do something about it seem to think it’s a problem to be fixed. 

She could just scream.

Instead, she feeds her son another cracker from her braids. There is something to be said for pacing yourself when interrogating men who have no real reason to give away information and who know all about the process anyway. She has questions, and she’s going to have to be strategic in how she goes about asking them. 

Pick the ones that are easier to answer first, and then they might keep answering as she throws harder ones at them. Or maybe start with a hard one and chip away at them with it until they gladly answer any number of easy ones. Or she can follow her Vasyenka’s lead and pick a question to ask on loop until it’s answered enough times to be sure the answer is staying the same. Maybe follow it up with infinite iterations of “but why?”

She chooses the question most salient to this particular moment.

“So when is he going to have _his_ lunch?” she asks without making any effort to mask the tartness of her query. “Since we will apparently be eating without him.” She gives her husband a tight little smile to match.

It’s true that sitting at the table with the Soldier would have been a difficult task. It’s true that she would have near enough passed out should there be a chance encounter between his elbow and her bosom. 

It’s true that the heat from sitting beside him might have done things to her self-control, things that would have sent her brain into a reprehensible spiral of inappropriate imaginings. It’s true that watching him eat, chew, swallow… watching his lips and his jaw and his throat… would have been a challenge to her ability to remain upright in thought and posture.

None of those truths make it acceptable to simply cast him from the table entirely and send him on some fool’s errand circling the neighborhood like a lost fly trying to escape a house where all the doors and windows are shut.

It would be bad enough if some sort of ranking procedures or military caste system forced the Soldier to eat alone in the kitchen while the rest of them dined in the main room. But it would be intolerable— _is_ intolerable—if the Soldier is simply not permitted to eat anywhere near them, or at the same time as them. If he is meant to dine on apples and whatever leavings there are in the other dacha gardens while they have a nice meal together, to scavenge for himself when she can provide.

If this is what was meant last night by not offering the Soldier anything, then she has a whole novel full of complaints to read off to her husband about _that_. And her father-in-law might as well hear it, too. See if she won’t dig her heels in. That Soldier is a guest in this dacha, and it’s utterly unacceptable that he not eat at her table with the rest of them.

“Well?” Polina raises an eyebrow.

Her husband looks at her father-in-law, who is clearly not planning to contribute even a scrap of moral support, let alone an answer, and clears his throat. “About that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.


	20. First Impressions | The General: Mirrors and misdirection

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday, a little after noon, 11 September 1960—**

Vladimir might be a pushover when it comes to keeping hold of a squirming child, but that’s forgivable. Vasily is only his first, so it’s understandable enough. Give him another one underfoot and he’ll learn how to hold a child who wants nothing more than to run face-first into what some might consider a domestic war zone. 

He’d be tempted to let Vasily do just that, since that oven door is closed and the only _actual_ threat in the room is therefore eliminated, but his Soldier is already dealing with one pushy civilian, and adding a second at this point isn’t a test so much as it’s pointless sabotage.

If it’s important that Vasily not form an aversion to his Soldier as some others have, it’s even more important that his Soldier not have cause to be overly wary of Vasily. A little skittishness is to be expected, a touch of uncertainty. The boy is a new experience, and a fragile one. His Soldier approaches most new experiences with a hunch that there’s a trap involved, and fragility is both a lure and a fear for him. Better to keep the boy out of the fray.

Better, and also easy, if you’ve picked up the knack for it. His grandson might want to run to his mother, might want to climb up her side and settle like a squirrel in the nest of her arms and make his stubbornly wordless pleas for attention. But when denied the option, the boy will settle for clinging to his lapels and watching with wide eyes as his father tames a lion.

And while there’s nothing on the surface of this kitchen tableau to spell out the nature of the tension in the room, even a child can tell when something is amiss. Especially a child. Uncannily perceptive little creatures, children. Able to sense that something is wrong without knowing what or why. Eager to pay attention to whatever it is an adult most wants left alone.

He understands the impulse to look for what others want to hide, particularly in this case. It’s always fascinating to watch another handler at work. Looking to see if they catch the same cues as oneself, if they make the same interpretation of cause and effect, and therefore solution. Picking apart each little mistake or approving of each success. Watching the shape his Soldier takes when molded by someone else’s hands.

His son is an excellent handler when he’s forced to be. 

He does well under pressure—does _better_ , in fact, when under pressure than when at ease. The greater the stakes, the calmer and more methodical his handling process. And their Soldier does respond well to calm and methodical handling. Not that fidgety nervousness in a handler that invites its behavioral mirror to manifest in what is being handled. 

It’s been proven time and again that nervous handlers lead directly to a nervous Soldier, after all. And that rarely ends well in unskilled hands. Rarely leaves unskilled hands whole, unskilled arms unbroken.

One of his son’s strong suits is perceiving potential environmental pitfalls—like the effects of timid, twitchy handling—with plenty of time to prevent them. If Vladimir had been in this kitchen the entire time, had curated his wife’s meeting from the moment she opened that door, then Polina could have slapped his Soldier with the entire drawer of potholders to little ill effect.

Because all the precursor stressors would have been managed. Others may mutter in the halls that Vladimir only appears to be so successful because he has connections, but one need only look at project records to confirm the truth in black, white and, occasionally, the rusty red-brown of old blood. Record keeping in the field can be untidy, he knows. But it also tends to be accurate. 

Who is consistently noted as the handler with the fewest field casualties since he’d left such things to younger men? Vladimir. Who holds the record for the lowest number of reprimands, either in the field or on base? Vladimir. Who has delayed the most ops due to corrective calibration, nipping anticipated behavioral malfunction before the bud even shows itself? Vladimir. 

Aleksander does come close in that last category, technically, though if one discounts hours his Soldier spends under the halo for the sake of Aleksander’s cruelty or unnecessary punishment rather than out of genuine necessity, Aleksander’s numbers fall right off the leaderboard, leaving Vladimir in a category all his own. 

Where few other field handlers can detect the seeds of malfunction before they explode in full bloom, let alone in time to dig them up, Vladimir not only senses them but is also willing to begin mission prep again—from the halo to the briefing—if that’s what it takes to start on solid ground.

Vladimir will run that halo as often as he has to, but never as punishment. Like him, his son prefers to run the halo hotter and cleaner for a shorter span of time, using the protocols that ensure it’s over as fast as possible. 

Vladimir’s reasoning seems to be that if there will be pain either way, it’s better for there to be more pain for a little while than less pain for longer. It’s not a bad strategy in the hands of someone capable of proper follow-up, and it’s his own preference as well, though for reasons that are somewhat off to the side from his son’s.

Hot and fast gets their Soldier to the field quicker, allows for more variety in what it is that emerges from under that halo—and it’s nice to see all the facets his Soldier has to offer—but given the risks inherent in that particular protocol, it is certainly not for everyone. 

It depends on accurate follow-up assessments, an eye for detail that will pick out a glitch before it ends in blood on the floor and dismembered technicians. And there is no room for mistakes or surface-level glances in lieu of a close inspection. Hot and fast leaves more room for error, sometimes sees the pieces of his Soldier’s mind falling into less desirable patterns. 

On one memorable occasion it even left him asking for Rogers instead of stating his compliance status, though that was quite a while ago, and his Soldier hadn’t had a firm enough grasp on his memory of the good captain to maintain the shape of him for the duration of a carefully crafted conversation. Yaroslav Danilovich and his team had taken another tour through his Soldier’s skull after that, and it hasn’t happened again since. 

He still considers such a thing to be a risk, however, particularly in the hands of any junior handler or green support team. The slower, more thorough halo sessions are recommended best practice for good reason. Such a slip of the conditioning would prove difficult to navigate for most. Even Vladimir might be at a loss, despite the pressure of such a situation that would otherwise render him sure-footed and decisive.

And that is what this current test is shaping up to confirm, as expected. Given time to fret, his son will fret, will stall, will argue against the inevitable. That assessment is still accurate. And given an emergency, his son will rise to occasion without hesitation. Also still accurate. Any recent sub-par performance can be attributed to a combination of lower stakes and increased distance from the source of his discomfort. 

And so it’s settled, then. If Vladimir is to be a suitable example for the child trying to remove one of the pins in his lapel, he will have to be prompted to resume his former responsibilities in their former proportions. Field ops will need to move back up to take the lion’s share of his duties, and base ops… 

Perhaps _he_ will take those over again. His Soldier has been restless lately and could use more quality time with him to settle his nerves. Forms and requests can be processed anywhere, after all. There’s nothing to say he must sit in that office and not in the prep room, the shooting range, the obstacle courses.

Done right, resuming the role of primary base handler has the additional benefit of allowing him the option to _stay_ on base for weeks on end, months even, though Vladimir has rarely done so. His son prefers to assign regular shifts to others—ostensibly to give them on-hands practice managing their Soldier during the evenings, though anyone could see the true reason for that is Polina herself. 

He has no such pleasant distractions. Imagine how much work he could get done without having to deal with Vera.

So there it is. He will pass the new arrangement back to base once this week is over, and his son will have to leave Cambodia behind, where it belongs, and rejoin their Soldier in the field.

And Vladimir will also need to refresh his skill set when it comes to the proper balance of reward and reprimand when off-base. He knows full well when and how to administer praise. Not too much, not too soon, not too abstract. Just listen to him thank their Soldier for appropriate paranoia and attentiveness in looking after Polina. But he’s considerably less adept with field reprimands, and always has been. 

While that’s not a terrible trait for an individual handler to have when combined with the rest—what harm does it do to be inept with a reprimand in the field when one arranges events such that there is no need for one?—it does need to be addressed if Vasily is to have a well-rounded understanding of protocol. 

Because Vladimir will not be an individual handler after this weekend. He will continue training replacements for the rank and file project personnel, yes. They’ll continue to need the replacements, even when his Soldier has a firmer hand guiding his behaviors. But he’ll be doing far more than that. 

He’s to be a critical part of the process of molding a suitable keeper for their Soldier long into the future. He is already better than other handlers, knowledgeable enough to train others and have them survive their Soldier for a time. But it isn’t enough that his son be better than any other handler so long as he’s under pressure; Vladimir has to be better than _Vladimir_ , whether there’s pressure or not. 

He won’t be training Vasily as a handler; he’ll train the boy to be more than that. With guidance, certainly, and not alone. Vladimir himself is not a suitable replacement, so he cannot train a suitable replacement without input. But he does have far more access to Vasily than anyone aside from Polina. He will have make use of that opportunity, and will have to be convinced to let go of the more pointless aspects of his fear.

Training up Vasily to be more than a handler requires Vladimir to be at least a little more than a handler himself. More than a handler, more than a trainer, more than merely extremely competent. Perhaps not fearless, but also not crippled in the absence of an emergency.

The main problem—the persistent one that merely overcoming nerves won’t solve—is lack of vision. Vladimir performs well in the present, reports well on the past, but ask him to project outward a decade or two and it all falls apart. 

He’d like to say this is a result of that wretched mission in Cambodia, but unfortunately it is not. Even in the beginning, when first joining this project, he’d been too concerned with the right-now and what’s-next, and oblivious to the what-could-be lurking out in the distance. Train the dog to perform its duty, yes. Envision the future of the training program? No.

Unless that potential future is a disaster, of course. Then he’s preoccupied with what he sees as inevitable catastrophe. 

Still, there is a use for that pessimism, in moderation. He suspects that gloomy negativity, the preoccupation with pitfalls and disaster, is what enables his son to predict their Soldier so well. Perhaps even helps him relate, since there’s an even darker mirror of that hopelessness and futility inside his Soldier’s mind. 

But however prepared his son might be to handle their Soldier on short notice, he has yet to embrace the assortment of activation codes Yaroslav Danilovich’s team has painstakingly implanted. That, unlike his reluctance to plan decades ahead, is an aversion he knows is entirely anchored in Cambodia. 

Seeing his Soldier in action there, using those activation codes built specifically to _keep_ him in action when every fiber of his being strains in the other direction, has spoiled the whole set of codes in Vladimir’s mind. He’ll recite the priming string while holding that book, certainly. But ask him to reinforce one of those words on its own, and that’s a bridge too far. 

Before Cambodia, he’d drop those in where necessary and move on, choosing his path based on the results. Afterward, no. It’s the full string under the halo, or it’s none at all. Another thing he’ll need to be reacquainted with. Another thing he misunderstands now and sees only in the negative light of his personal trauma.

In this situation, for instance, sending their Soldier off to patrol this little neighborhood and reassure himself that the roads—such as they are—remain clear is an excellent choice rendered minimally effective by his son’s refusal to accept the benefits of those activation codes beyond their face value as a primer.

It’s not necessary to fill that gap, to layer codes and triggers on top of the task itself. A table can be assembled but left unvarnished, and it will still hold weight. But varnish does more than make an ordinary bit of tabletop shine. It protects the integrity of the wood that table is made from, just as the judicious application of a code word or two will seal in the strength of the conditioning that task is crafted from.

And this is a week that will test his Soldier’s conditioning with an onslaught of new experiences and new skills to pick up. That conditioning could stand some varnish, both to strengthen what is already firm and to reveal any hairline cracks. 

Vladimir has laid out the task, and after distracting Polina with a word and a toddler, it’s simple enough for him to step in and apply the varnish. 

 _Nine_. Remind him of his current family, though he’s more satellite than member. Reinforce his connection to _this_ team, to the people he answers to _now_ , and draw on and redirect the strength of the Sergeant’s bonds with his ragtag team of wild men, the woman, their weapons dealer and their commander. 

Round and round they’d gone, in the beginning. You say you’re waiting for your team to collect you. Then who is your team. Who do you remember. What are their names. No names? Then who are they to you. What roles do they play. What are their shapes. 

They are _not_ coming for you. We’ve _already_ come for you. You are where you belong. Here, now, to this team. These are our names. This is who we are to you. This is the role we play. These are our shapes.

The members of that wartime coterie had fluctuated as much as the Sergeant’s ability to recall their names. Sometimes Carter, sometimes not. Sometimes Phillips, sometimes not. Always Rogers. Always Stark. The rest shifted, name to face to name to role to personality to name and then finally, never back again. And the roster had never included himself. 

On the whole, there’d been nine of them. Nine regulars, in any case. Why search for a poetic container for their programming when a mundane number would do the trick, spoken just so, by just the right voice.

 _Benign_. Reassure him of his current status, his current rest from slaughtering their enemies, the reprieve from violence. Reinforce his deep-seated need to protect others at whatever cost to himself. The Sergeant protected family, protected friends, protected students, protected soldiers under his care. His Soldier has none of those, but the impulse remains and is as easily redirected as it is distracted.

Don’t punish him for protecting the wrong person, for stepping between executioner and target, for side-stepping worms on the concrete and wasting water on exhausted bees. He isn’t wrong to do that, he’s just distracted. Re-orient him. Turn him around and point him at handler, at support team, at field operatives, at the good of the motherland. _This_ is where your protection belongs. _These_ are the people you keep safe. _This_ is the country you defend.

Properly directed, an urge to do no harm can easily become an urge to harm the one in the protection of another. An impulse to spare the target can become an impulse to make the hit—violence now for the sake of peace later.

And if twisted just so, the original base instinct, the drive toward simply not fighting, not arguing, not harming… Well that is what they want from him in relation to themselves, is it not? Benign compliance in the one direction, ruthlessly efficient violence in the other. Used with care, a single code word will do for both sides of that scale.

Is it a lengthier perimeter check than is ideal? Of course. His Soldier can use the escape from the confines of this dacha and the stressors inside it, but he hardly needs that much time for it. Still, the conditioning _glows_ under the varnish of those words. A few lost hours are a drop in the bucket of a week and change, are a small price to pay.

But he will need that gun. Polina’s inevitable objections might not touch on the matter of names, but if they do, that will be an ideal object lesson for her. Left on the counter, where his Soldier will no doubt place it, the gun will distract her and keep her off-balance when he needs it to. Set down in front of her… it will silence her objections long enough to plant a few seeds.

“Leave it.”

The boy is out of view, and even if his grandson does see it and take an interest, it’s easily enough hidden away until his Soldier can reclaim it.

And there’s the anticipated hairline fracture, highlighted by the strength of the surrounding conditioning. The micro-expression of shame flashing across his Soldier’s face, that quashed display of failure, of regret, of disappointment that he _is_ a disappointment. 

He schools his own expression into the reflection of that—yes I _am_ disappointed—cast every bit as fleetingly as his Soldier’s. Let his Soldier think that he has found cause not to trust him. Let his Soldier wonder at the reason for that, ponder this day that has only been half-lived as of yet and still holds everything that it does. All of the failures, both real and imagined.

Let his Soldier spend this perimeter check rediscovering his balance in all senses. Reward and reprimand, success and failure, pleasingly compliant and disappointingly off the mark. He’ll have enough time for it. Will undoubtedly come to him with a report, with some little token that’s caught his eye and filled him with hope, and with at least one admission of malfunction.

Whatever is hiding in the hairline fracture will seep out and be reported if his Soldier is given the time to find it. And he has nine rounds to make. There will be time.

In the meantime, there is Polina to consider. She is as full of questions as her potholders are of polka-dots. Near to spilling over with them, and desperately plotting a way to spread them out for maximum effect. Excellent. It’s in everyone’s best interests that she get those questions answered very, _very_ thoroughly.

Just as soon as Vladimir clears the path for him. It’s been his son’s practice to lie by omission, to misdirect, to re-imagine the truth as it might be in a better world, and present that truth in lieu of the darker, less pleasant facts. That will change this week. It will have to.

Everything he’s been dancing around is right here in this dacha or roaming the area around it. He will not be able to escape his wife pinning him down and dragging the truth out of him, not once that truth arrived in this dacha. And baked her a pie.

Even if his son _is_ determined to hold out and keep Polina out of the shadows, he won’t last a solid week. He’s already wrung out from their argument back on base, from the stress of listening to the antics of his wife swooning over their Soldier, from the gnawing anxiety of little Vasily caught in what he thinks of as the crossfire.

If his son even finishes the day without coming right out with the bare truth in all its damaged glory, he’ll be mildly surprised. It’s far more likely, based on mannerisms on display in this kitchen, that his son won’t make it to the meal without deciding prevarication is futile at best. 

Particularly with how little support he’ll be getting from this corner. Oh, there are arguments and explanations he will need to step in to deliver, certainly, but it’s crucial that Polina see her husband present what facts he’s comfortable with her knowing, and then to see him give up more of them in the face of her persistence.

Persistence will be rewarded this week, where before it would not have been. But she does need to fight for it. Anything given too easily could raise suspicion. Something hard-won will be easier for her to trust. Polina needs to see resistance followed by capitulation, and when her victory opens up before her, she will chase that victory to its logical conclusion.

Where he will be waiting for her with logic of his own.

He won’t fully convince her over a week, and that’s not his aim—not within a week, not within a year, not at all. There are plenty of people available to toe the line and accept what they are told to accept. Polina serves a far more valuable purpose as an objector who cannot actually change anything, but who thinks perhaps she _could_ effect a change if she just wades a little further in. Gets herself that little bit dirtier in her attempts to clean up what she sees as a mess.

All he needs her to do today is to walk along the uncertain shoreline and get a good look at what lies further in. She can get herself mired in the shallows later, as she tries to fix all of the things that are not broken.

The trick to managing Polina will be appealing to her motivations. She is a kind-hearted woman and a hostess by her very nature. She will want to help. Already wants to help. She will be unable to put it down, unable to stop thinking about what she will view as an injustice. Vladimir cannot simply say that their Soldier is no person, that he eats no food, that he has no name. Those are injustices. 

A better strategy is to pull up the minuscule, tenuous thread of logic that indicates lack of personhood to be a blessing, a respite from gnawing guilt. Lack of solid food to be a solution rather than a problem in and of itself, a way around a pre-existing obstacle. Lack of a name to be a protection against despair. Pull up that thread and twist it around her until it becomes a support structure.

Let her think of herself as a rescuer and defender—let her strenuously object to the injustices, rail against the current solutions, and meddle behind the scenes—long enough to become inured to it all alongside her husband. There is more than enough time for her accept her limitations and make the most of what little she _can_ do about the situation.

He’s made a decades-long career of convincing people to do what is not in their best interests to do. Polina will be easily enough led, so long as she feels she is the leader and is never given an opportunity to see that she has fallen into line after all.

Vasily is only three. 

By the time he’s instinctively reaching for their Soldier’s leash, he’ll have the proper mindset for it drilled in from both of his parents. Caution and perception from Vladimir, affection and kindness from Polina. 

And from him? Dedication to the project and to their Soldier, and the ruthlessness required to see his will be done regardless of the opposition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.
> 
> Vera Mikhailovna Karpova, nee Morozova, the General’s second wife. Also called Verochka by her husband, and Mother or Grandmother by other family. The Soldier tends to refer to her as the General’s wife, with the occasional addition of various unflattering qualifiers.
> 
> Yaroslav Danilovich Nekrasov, the head of the excavation team. Also called Yarik.
> 
> Aleksander Lukin, the General’s adopted son. Also called Sasha, and referred to by the Soldier as the Lieutenant.


	21. First Impressions | Polina: Weapons, tools and things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still kicking. Have some Polina-style righteous rage. ^_^

**—The dacha outside of Perm: Sunday afternoon, 11 September 1960—**

“Tell me again why it is that the Soldier is wandering around outside with his aching hand and empty stomach, and not sitting here sharing this meal with us.”

Vladimir looks like _he_ would rather be wandering around outside than sitting here, even if it required a burned hand to accomplish, but Polina refuses to let the matter drop. It’s not “all right” that an uninjured metal hand go without treatment, not in any sense of the words—pain is pain, and if he felt it, he felt it and should be comforted. But it is at least logical enough. If there isn’t an injury to see to, how do you go about making something metal feel better? 

What is not logical in the slightest is that a man with at least as high a metabolism as her husband’s go without a meal. _Really_. Even if he ate a late breakfast, which she suspects he did not do, a man in that sort of shape needs plenty of food, _and often_. She knows. She’s fed a very active and well-built man for years. Men do not grow strong and stay strong without hearty meals.

Her Vovochka eats very solid portions to maintain his physique, and while it is an excellent physique that she would be distracted by if she weren’t so mad at him right now, it is nevertheless not quite so _defined_ as the Soldier’s. She isn’t entirely certain there _is_ another physique out there in the wide world that is so defined as that. But it stands to reason that the Soldier would need even more fuel to maintain his… even more powerful body.

But no, send him off without so much as a sausage roll to nibble on until he returns. Even leaving aside the meanness of telling him that _they_ were going to eat right before ordering him outside without any food—which is cruelty and no mincing words about it—her sensibilities as a hostess are just screaming at her. And her maternal instincts are squawking just as loudly.

The man made her a pie, and this is how he is repaid?! It’s unconscionable. She wants to march out there, chase him down, and give him the entire pie, all to himself, and it would serve the others right not get a piece of it.

Her husband heaves a little put-upon sigh that he has no right to—if anyone at this table is “put-upon,” it is her having listen to this cruelty and nonsense—as he deposits another small handful of carefully cut up chicken on their son’s plate. 

“The Soldier does not eat people food,” he says yet again. 

His words are flat, rote, as though he’s said this often enough by now that it holds no meaning for him, despite the wrongness that should be calling attention to itself in every part—“the Soldier,” not a name; “doesn’t eat,” ridiculous; “people food,” and just what does that even _mean_.

“Because the Soldier is not a person,” he says.

And that’s just more nonsense—why, anyone with eyes in their head can see that the Soldier is a person. If he doesn’t _act_ like a person, that’s more a sign of not being treated well or interacted with, a sign of being ostracized and excluded, rather than one of… of actual otherness. 

He _cares_ like a person. More than most people, even, if she’s read him right. And she thinks she has. She’s very good at reading people, thank you ever so kindly. And she’s had hours to read him. Yes, he cares very deeply. The Soldier’s concern for others is wide and deep and strong.

And her father-in-law as much as confirmed her reading of him… while somehow also making a point about how that empathy necessitated this treatment. Something about how being a person has costs, and how a weapon has no need for guilt. About how weapons can’t even experience guilt, don’t mourn or agonize over the blood they shed.

Tch. That’s all well and good. She’s sure that gun and all the Soldier’s knives are just perfectly content to be used to slaughter dozens of people in a single afternoon—and really, did they send him after dozens? in one afternoon? 

Regardless, she’s sure they don’t suffer at all once they’re brought home, carefully cleaned— _cleaned?_ like they think he’s object?!—and put away until the next time. Put away. Who could put the Soldier away, and what does that even entail? How do you put a person away without… without locking them up. 

Of course they don’t suffer for this, that gun and all the knives. They’re actually weapons. Not people. And the Soldier is actually a person. Not a weapon. Though she can well imagine the turmoil and distress that gentle, well-built fawn must feel afterward, she still can’t accept that the answer is to just treat him like something that won’t feel guilty about it and hope he internalizes that. 

People don’t work that way. They don’t just not feel something because they aren’t supposed to. And the Soldier is a _person_.

She would never welcome her husband back home after a mission and see that he was weighed down by the consequences of his actions and then tell him to just not feel any of the emotions swirling about inside. That wouldn’t help anything. It would only make things worse.

Vasily swipes the majority of his parsnips off his plate and off the table entirely, and Polina reaches for the serving bowl to cut up replacements for him. Her son will eat his parsnips even if the Soldier isn’t allowed to eat any.

Polina glowers at her husband as she slices a couple of parsnip slices up small enough for little Vasya. He’s a growing boy. He needs his vegetables. And the Soldier is very well-grown man. He also needs his vegetables, though he’s getting precious few today, what with his “patrol.”

“And the Soldier would hate sitting here, anyway,” Vladimir adds under his breath as he accepts the parsnip pieces from her and puts them in the center of their son’s plate. “It’s a _favor_ , getting him out of this dacha, Polina.”

A _favor_. Ordering him out and away from everyone to wander around assessing a perfectly safe area for nonexistent dangers, without a single thing to eat or drink, and not even a thank you for that pie, and while still upset by her startling him?

A favor. Unlikely at best. 

It’s for the better that she has finally received a few answers, though there isn’t any part of those answers she can actually agree with, no matter how many times she drags those answers out into the open, or how many times they appear unchanged. 

Doesn’t eat people food. Isn’t a person. It’s a kindness. Oh, it’s just _infuriating_.

At least the gun has finally been put away. Or put up on a high shelf, anyway, where a properly supervised toddler won’t stumble across it. The one tolerable development since the Soldier slipped out of the dacha like a whisper.

But looking at that gun earlier, placed by her father-in-law so heavily in front of her, so near her, so close she could practically feel it in her hand, could imagine its solid heft in her palm, the potential violence… Looking at that, staring at it, knowing that it has been used to kill people, unable to look away, and hearing him say that his Soldier is a weapon, a tool, a thing with no more name than this gun, this knife, that whisk, that spoon… 

Who could look into that man’s expressive eyes, or listen to his gentle voice, or watch him move so carefully, and think to themselves, “weapon, tool, thing?” Who could _do_ that? Who could fail to see the humanity in his every reaction, the earnestness in his every response, the vulnerability folded into his every hesitation?

“Who names their favorite wooden spoon,” he asks?

The better question is, “Who would equate a person with a wooden spoon, favorite or otherwise?”

She’s already gotten part of an answer to that, even if it’s a terrible answer: her husband and father-in-law, that’s who. And she’s heard a bit of the _why_ , though it’s nothing she can stand behind. It’s the _how_ that remains unanswered, and will have to continue so for now while she instead attacks the current subject. She’ll circle around later… when her father-in-law isn’t in the room.

So the Soldier doesn’t eat “people food.” Fine. She can’t get her husband to elaborate on that even by repeating what she thinks is a very pointed question? Then she’ll do the elaboration herself. 

Polina furiously saws off a bite of her chicken and sets the knife down with a thump. “And then what _does_ he eat,” she asks, “if not ‘people food?’” She shoves the chicken into her mouth and grinds it between her teeth. This is unacceptable. Food is food. People are people. The Soldier is a person, not a weapon, tool, thing. Why shouldn’t he eat food like a person? 

What is “people food,” anyway? The question whirls around and around her mind. What makes some food fit for people and other food not? But why would you place anything but high-quality food in front of a man you depend on to have your back in the field? It just doesn’t make sense!

Vladimir looks over at his father, and Polina can just about read his mind, asking for support here as he’d received earlier, with the name. But her father-in-law merely raises an eyebrow and turns a hand over, palm up, fingers splayed, a nonverbal invitation for his son to please feel welcome to answer the question, already. 

Well, no help for her husband from that corner, not this time, at least. 

Oh, he handled the inquiry about the Soldier’s name—handled it with a gun of all things, as though there wasn’t a toddler practicing self-directed play in the next room. Of course, she doesn’t _believe_ there isn’t a name, not for a second, not really. He has a name. She knows it. 

She’ll just have to find a better way to ask, and preferably without an opportunity for her father-in-law to help answer. Because who knows how he’d handle a repeated inquiry if the first was met with a gun for an object lesson. 

A gun and what has to be nonsense about shouldering burdens, and protecting the Soldier from guilt by removing agency, and encouraging productivity by stripping away the distractions of emotion. Explanations about sacrifice and unfortunate necessity, about mercy and the greater good. 

Things that she will need to think about later with a clear mind, because yes, sacrifice is needed for the greater good, and she supposes it would be merciful to have guilt lifted off his shoulders, and yes, everyone must work hard and do their part, but… surely not this part. Surely not this way.

Her husband may want his father to pitch in and help steer this conversation, but she’s very, very glad he doesn’t. For an immovable object, her father-in-law is slippery and full of quicksand that confuses the subject and turns everything around, painted in shades of gray so blurry even she could lose track of the moral high ground if he talked long enough—and she’s standing right on it!

So much for direct answers to demanding questions. He led her a merry chase—merry for him, anyway—and she’d hate him for it if she wasn’t impressed. She has always thought her Vovochka an excellent verbal strategist, but compared to his father, he still has a lot to master in the field of misdirection. And his mentor is sitting back in his chair and obviously enjoying this.

Her husband is very much not.

And good. It serves her husband right to be as uncomfortable as he is right now. The Soldier is no doubt uncomfortable, too, somewhere in the vicinity, what with his empty stomach and that hand that she is not certain she believes doesn’t hurt him still. Her husband can share some of that discomfort.

She gives him until she finishes her piece of chicken and also three perfectly even parsnip slices before she joins her father-in-law in raising an eyebrow at him. “Well? What _does_ he eat?”

He sighs. “It’s difficult to explain,” he finally says, clearly without even attempting to craft an appealing lie for her.

Polina looks at him flatly. “ _Try._ ”

“The Soldier is enhanced. He has a very strict dietary regimen, Polina.” He pauses to put the parsnips back on their son’s plate once more with murmured instructions to eat it, please, it is yummy and your mama worked hard to cook it for you. “Chicken is not something he can eat. Nor are peas, carrots, parsnips, butter, bread, or that pie you had him bake.”

Well, to maintain that figure of his, she’s sure he does have a strict dietary regimen. That doesn’t mean he can’t eat at the table with them, and if anything, it means he should be eating more, not less. 

If he can’t have chicken, she’ll cook something else. There are fish in the stream, sausages, some pork in the freezer, a few jars of pickled herring… Parsnips roasted in butter are out? They had a good harvest this year, so there are still onions, squash, cabbage, potatoes, beans, pickled okra and cucumbers, beets… There is pasta, rice, crackers… She can make bread with oat flour, or buckwheat, or cornmeal… 

She’s creative. She can feed that Soldier for days on end without repeating a single dish, if her husband will only tell her what her options are.

“I’m still not hearing the answer to my question, darling,” she says sweetly, with just a hint of fluttered lashes to let him know how irritated she is. Polina presses a pat of butter to her roll and pointedly spreads it over the surface. “I asked what he _does_ eat, not what he doesn’t.”

She can see his jaw clench for just a moment, and while she would ordinarily allow the subject to shift, she has a feeling that once this aspect of the conversation moves on, she won’t be able to get it started back up. The topic will be closed and she will have to move on to the next. If she wants the details—and oh, does she ever want the details—this could be her last opportunity for a while. 

If she doesn’t make the most of it, then she will be guessing at every menu, and possibly preparing whole meals without a single Soldier-safe dish on the table. Like this lunch. Easily ten generations of hostesses in her family line would roll right over in their graves and then crawl up out of the ground to scold her, and she would deserve it. 

Her husband knows she’s upset. He must know exactly how upset, too. And he always, _always_ finds a way to shut down any conversation that upsets her this much, and usually she wouldn’t mind it. It isn’t as though she _likes_ to be upset. She doesn’t seek these topics out. Well, not too often, anyway.

She’s surprised he hasn’t prevented her from bringing it up entirely, in fact. But she _has_ brought it up, and she _is_ upset, and so now she knows he will dig his heels in, will plant himself firmly so that he can pivot this entire thing without her even realizing he’s gotten them off track until she’s deep into some completely different subject. Just like his slippery eel of a father taught him.

She just has to not let him. Somehow. Not this time.

“I don’t know.”

Which is not what she expected him to say. Which is, in fact, so far away from the sort of thing she expected that she just stares at him for long enough that he has every opportunity to twist right out of the path of her question. And will certainly take it, she realizes, and now she’s lost her chance. Well, she still has to try.

“You don’t know?” she asks. 

How can he not know? If there is a “strict dietary regimen” and he is in charge of seeing to the Soldier, how can he not know what the Soldier should be eating? Hasn’t he eaten meals on base with the Soldier and their fellow operatives, or at least supervised the Soldier during what must be terribly lonely solo dining experiences, if the Soldier isn’t even allowed near the others for meals?

“I’m not a nutrition specialist, Polina.” He shrugs, looking tired about the eyes, and for some reason not even trying to wiggle out of the question. “I have no idea what it is he drinks. I have even less of an idea what goes in the IVs. There are teams for that. I’m not on those teams, and I don’t know.”

Polina gapes for a moment, and then shuts her mouth. What he… drinks? IVs? Does he not _eat_ anything? Is he ill? IVs are for hospitals. He doesn’t look ill. He looks… very, _very_ fit, and she has studied him closely to come to that conclusion with every certainty. He is in excellent health. In fine form, whether for fighting or for any other activity in the world, from the looks of him. 

You don’t just hook up a physical masterpiece to a pole with some tubing because you _feel_ like it. And you don’t get solid meat on sturdy bones by drinking… milkshakes. Blended foods mashed so fine and so watered down as to be sipped from a glass. Whatever liquid her husband is talking about.

That’s not possible. And if it is, it’s horrible. 

This is not how this conversation should be going. Her husband should be trying to keep her in the brightly lit happy place where she doesn’t know about the shadows he deals with every day. He should be wiggling out of her questions, and asking _her_ questions to misdirect her, and… And looking more in his element, and not like he’s just given up.

“It works,” he says, part words and part sigh. “It keeps him going. He hates it,” he admits, “but he hates everything else, too.” Her husband shrugs, expression open and… tired. So tired. “He follows the feeding schedule without argument, and that’s what matters.”

Polina blinks a few times, not exactly sure what to say to that, or whether she even wants to have this conversation anymore, or what she thinks about any of this. It’s not a gun on the table, but in some ways, it’s just as shocking. Maybe it’s the unguarded truth that stops her in her tracks. Maybe it’s what that truth is. Maybe it’s finally getting what she wants and learning that she never wanted it at all.

She picks up her napkin, dabs at her mouth, and sets it down. She considers reaching for her water, but feels as though her hand might tremble, and that just would not do. If she wants any other answers—and she does, she _has_ to have them, she cannot afford to be ignorant if she is going to help the Soldier—then she cannot show the extent of her weakness. 

They will tell her nothing if she cries here.

“…Excuse me,” she says softly. It’s an effort to stand, but she manages it with only a little wobble. “I’m,” she says, and then swallows. “Going outside to get some air.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mini Who’s Who**  
>  In this chapter: 
> 
> Polina Tarasovna Karpova, nee Sokolova, Vladimir’s wife. Also called Polinochka, Polya, Polinka (which can be kind of rude). The Soldier tends to think of her as the wife with the warm disposition.
> 
> Vladimir Ivanovich Karpov, the General’s son. Also called Vova, Vovochka, Volodya. Referred to by the Soldier as the General’s handler son, the sweet tooth handler, and (more rarely) a variety of other designations.
> 
> Ivan Fyodorovich Karpov, the General. Also called, well, let’s be honest, almost exclusively referred to as the General, Father, or similar. His wife calls him Ivan, Vanya or Vanyechka, depending on her mood.
> 
> Vasily Vladimirovich Karpov, the General’s grandson and the Karpov who shows up in Civil War. Also called Vasya, Vasyenka, the little minnow, _golyanchik_.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Content Warnings:**  
> 
> There was a mission in Cambodia that was really awful and essentially one gigantic war crime involving several of the things you might expect given the timing and location (the Vietnam War was not a pretty picture and atrocities abound). Events are alluded to, and results are described in some detail. None of it appears actively on the page being performed by characters in real time. Characters who were involved remember it and reference it. 
> 
> There are lots of ways to invoke/reinforce the Winter Soldier’s activation codes/trigger words, and some of them include chemical torture. I’ve wrapped this into the “medical torture” tag. 
> 
> Also, some references to suicidal ideation and attempts; not depicted in present time or shown on the page in any detail. 
> 
> There is nausea, and also some retching, and also some vomiting. It skeeves me out, so it’s pretty brief. You’ll see it coming.
> 
> If any of the above need some further elaboration for you to feel okay reading this, please don’t hesitate to [message me](https://flamingo-queen-writes.tumblr.com/). If there’s a chapter you need to skip for some reason, I’ll give you a summary so you don’t get lost. I’m super-interested in making sure no one gets blindsided by something triggery, but I also don’t know for sure what those triggery things are for everyone.


End file.
